


Clear Separation

by BrideofCrixus



Category: Bane and Batman, Batman (Movies - Nolan), The Bane Chronicles - Sarah Rees Brennan & Cassandra Clare & Maureen Johnson
Genre: Bane is sexy hot, F/M, lots of violence and probably offensive somewhere, sex and violence afoot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-16
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:08:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 13
Words: 64,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24748858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrideofCrixus/pseuds/BrideofCrixus
Summary: Bane is injured and scooped off the streets by men that are nearly as dangerous as he is and transferred to an underground prison hospital. Dr. Erin Gibson is the only other inmate. She has a plan and he has an offer. Can either trust the other. Bruce and Selina are toasting their perceived success as Gotham still awaits its reckoning.
Comments: 26
Kudos: 5





	1. Chapter 1

Bane’s fallen and unconscious form was reached first by a pair of paramedics. He was discovered with the barest of vitals. A foam collar was placed around his neck in case of a spinal injury and he was strapped to a gurney with three thick and wide black Velcro straps. The men who loaded him on a stretcher were watched by a group of men who followed as soon as the ambulance departed the scene. 

They met the ambulance at the ambulance entrance by a black Cadillac with deeply tinted windows and steel grey rims. 

A tall, slim man with glasses got out of the passenger seat and waved to someone across the parking lot. 

It seemed at once to the duo in the ambulance that this approaching panel van just suddenly appeared and two men in nondescript blue coveralls wheeled the gurney with Bane away from their hands. 

The tall man in the spectacles handed each of them a fat legal sized envelope. “Keep what you’ve observed to yourselves gentlemen. Or. Each of you will end up with no heads or hearts.”

The two men nodded dumbly as the eye glass wearing man returned to the Cadillac and followed the panel van from the parking lot.

The shorter of the men who had wheeled Bane into the van hopped into the driver’s seat and left his partner in the rear with their new patient. 

The other man in the coveralls had been a doctor in South America and immediately hooked Bane up to a portable respirator and started a large bore IV line in his left arm. He then did all that he could to stabilize the bleeding and threw in a few crude stitches where they were warranted. The dark grey panel van sped through the city; the side of the van had been freshly painted with the logo of a branch of the United States military as well as government plates. They were able to get to a large steel roofed building without being molested. 

Once at the site, the van pulled up to a cement ramp and the two men in blue wheeled Bane up the sloped walkway and brought him to a makeshift operating room. The bright overhead lights glinted off his twisted and partially smashed mask.

The two men changed into gowns that were mostly clean at best and instruments that were free of any obvious dust and debris and over the next eight hours were able to stabilize Bane and fix all the obvious injuries. They moved him from the operating room table to the stolen gurney and brought him to a plexi-glass cell that held a small steel toilet, sink, and cot. 

Bane was deposited on the poorly padded cot and settled there with a scratchy sheet and threadbare blanket in an obnoxious canary yellow hue.

“Erin, you now have a neighbor,” one of the men called to the only other occupant of the neighboring plastic walled prison cells. 

The man laughed when she flipped him the bird and triple locked Bane’s cell.

Erin moved from her own cot where she had been trying to sleep when they brought in the new prisoner. 

She approached the clear wall that separated them, the new arrival was heavily bandaged under his thin blue cotton gown. Erin squinted her eyes in the near dark, the only light from one at the end of hall. The sparse lights emanated from a stairwell for fire emergencies. 

His gown had ridden up and Erin could see his abdomen was swathed in a layer of thick, white bandages. 

Bane’s chest moved under the threadbare gown, a slow rise and fall from the effect of multiple post-operative drugs. Her eyes followed the clear tubing that allowed saline to drip into his body. Erin tilted her head in curiosity when she saw that his wrists had been tethered to the cot, his left arm was secured with enough room for the IV to not become crimped and clot off. 

Her eyes continued upwards and traced along the line of his neck, the lower part of his face was covered with what she though resembled a harness of a mask. She pressed her face closer to the plexi-glass walls of her cell and strained her eyes to examine the mask that covered his nose and mouth.

Erin didn’t understand the inner workings of how his mask worked but she could see even from her distance that something was functionally wrong with it. All but one of the prongs were standing straight up or skewed to the side. She let her eyes fall upon his closed ones, despite the heavy layer of narcotics, there was still a tension that exuded from him. 

She recognized the physical signs of pain and she hated the feeling of not being able to do anything. Erin closed her hands into fists and watched the unconscious man in the other bare cell that was boasted to be inescapable. 

Over the next 48 hours, Bane was regularly monitored by the man who had operated on him first in the van, timing his stitches through the ragged flesh of Bane’s abdomen according to speed bumps and poor street conditions and later in the close to clean operating room suite. 

Erin watched the man who used to be a surgeon in Paraguay peel away the thin gown that had kept Bane’s body from her view. She craned her neck to see around the no longer practicing legal medicine doctor as he palpated the skin on Bane’s neck and upper chest. 

Erin’s frown deepened each time Bane’s fingertips twitched under the doctor’s probing touch. She stared at the doctor’s back as he replaced a few of the gauze bandages and adjusted the IV drip. “Stop hurting him,” she thought as the doctor moved Bane’s gown back into place and pushed a fluorescent pink filled syringe into his IV line. 

While Erin drifted away from the glass wall and back to her cot, Bane’s mind was erratic and filled with shattered images and disjointed thoughts. Shadows danced and bled into brackish pools behind his eyes. The ebb and flow of powerful waves of pain raped his senses and threatened to consume him alive. 

When the webbing of narcotics waned a bit, Bane was able to sharpen his dulled senses. The heavy pull of the medications and healing body pulled him into an abyss of fatigue, and he kept his eyes closed as he let his hearing heighten and absorb all the sounds falling around him.

Bane knew the gender of his neighbor before he heard her voice. Through the sound of her light footfalls and the whisper of her hair being pulled through the teeth of the black plastic comb. Through the busted coils of his mask, he could detect the slight floral scent of the wholesale shampoo and lotion the prison had issued her.

He was able to push some of his pain at bay by focusing on the sounds of her routines until they became familiar and often predictable. Bane’s curiosity grew as he listened to the springs protesting in squealing and squeaking death throes as she tossed and turned until the early hours of the morning.

At the transition between night and day, she would fall into a deep sleep and be awakened when the overcooked eggs were delivered on a stainless-steel plate with a sulfur scented cloud. The eggs were accompanied by a single slice of bacon that was either overcooked and brittle or flaccid and oozing grease alongside a scoop of pale colored oats. 

Every couple of days there would be a small stack of triangularly cut toast either burnt and crispy or barely brushed with heat. Bane would listen to her either peel away the soft crusts of the bread or break off the scorched edges. 

Bane would always listen as she pushed the tray aside and drank the cup of black coffee that was served in a matching stainless-steel cup, he would then listen to her drain the glass of juice or water that was also on the tray. 

Bane was receiving sustenance through his IV tubing; the once surgeon would come and hang a bag of nutritional supplements which would drip into his body over several hours. Bane knew the doctor was coming by the demons that screamed from him. 

Bane also knew without anyone telling him, that the man who had been his surgeon and the reason he didn’t bleed to death, had a dark past and plenty of screaming skeletons behind straining doors.

Bane would have been right; the no longer legal surgeon had been one of the most respected surgeons in South America. This man, Matheus Cruz was accused of human experimentation and torture in the early 1980’s. Cruz was brought to trial, but all evidence had been obtained sloppily or illegally and the witnesses couldn’t stand up to cross-examination. Cruz was eventually acquitted but stripped of the ability to practice medicine again. 

Cruz was guilty of everything he was brought to trial for and more, but he was careful and cleaned up whatever could be traced back to him. He was hired by the tall man who wore dark glasses inside and rode shotgun in a new Cadillac. Cruz was ordered to keep Bane alive for a salary that was worthy of several CEO’s of Fortune 500 Companies combined. 

Cruz, despite having a fixation on inflicting pain, was still top of his field and had still had rock-steady hands. Cruz’s deft hands moved quickly over Bane’s body during follow-up exams, his slim fingers that now sustained life, had also taken thousands of lives from this world with crude surgical experimentations without the use of conventional anesthesia. 

While Selena and Bruce traipsed about in Europe and enjoyed highfalutin espresso while tossing coins in various fountains, Bane’s body began on the slow path to recovery. While his internal organs and flesh began to knit back together and healed, his visits from the South American ex-surgeon lessened. 

Without the annoyance of being interrupted by the doctor’s knowledgeable hands, he was able to focus on his female neighbor’s movements and habits. Throughout her waking time, Bane would keep his eyes closed and only listen. He fought the temptation to crack his eyes open when everyday her breathing would turn deliberate in its every inhale and exhale. 

Bane could feel his body knitting, his incisions had begun to itch as flesh rebuilt and became layered over with the beginning of new scar tissue. He longed for the pain relief from his mask, the cocktail he was used to breathing would have enabled him to rip through the restraints and break the neck of the doctor who examined him. The doctor with his breath smelling of rot and decay as he leaned over Bane’s body. 

Bane was kept on a heavy dose of muscle relaxants to keep his body heavy and sluggish. This did little to keep the incessant screaming of his nervous system at bay. Just enough so he could be a silent audience to his imprisoned neighbor as she talked and sang to herself throughout the day and night. 

It was always night behind his eyes as he laid on his cot with his eyes closed, the prison cells were located under an industrial building and was devoid of natural light. Overhead, the fluorescent lights were turned on and off at irregular intervals to confuse the body and cause sleep disturbances and the inability to track time of confinement. 

Despite that, his female neighbor was removed from her cell twice a week to go to for a quick and cold shower. It was during her weekly brief absences that he allowed his eyelids to crack open and survey his cell. There was nothing to see in his own cramped quarters except the stainless-steel commode and grey flooring.

The clear plexi-glass walls gave him an unobstructed view into his neighbor’s cramped cell. He let his eyes move over her cot with its obnoxious colored linen and pillow with indentation of where her head settled for sleep. Next to the cot was a small stack of books with creased spines and ripped or altogether missing pages.  
Bane closed his eyes when he detected the sound of approaching footsteps. 

Erin was delivered back to her cell and Bane listened as the metallic melody of handcuffs being removed from her wrists reached his ears. After her cell door had been securely locked, he could hear her slump heavily on her cot. 

While his eyes were closed and he had only his ears to decipher her activity, he missed her eyes immediately returning to him after she had returned from her shower. Erin noticed upon return to her cell that his gown had shifted away from his neck, as though he had turned his head to observe his surroundings. She stood from her cot and walked over to the clear wall that separated them. 

Erin let her eyes examine Bane’s profile as he laid still with his eyes closed before moving her eyes down his neck and along his body.

She let her eyes linger on his neck, heavily corded with toned musculature. Her eyes settled briefly on the hollow at the base of his neck. 

Erin’s eyes sought his blue gown covered shoulders that strained against the thin fabric, she moved her gaze along his exposed arms and hands with scarred knuckles. 

She leaned closer to the plexi-glass wall that separated them, her breath fogged up the clear surface and formed a small cloud as she let her eyes be drawn to his broad chest. 

Erin squinted her eyes and could see the slight rise and fall of Bane’s chest, she was counting each of his inhalations when his voice forced her to lose count.  
“Have you had your fill yet?” Bane’s voice called to her. 

Erin’s eyes darted back to his, they were open now and looking back at her. She felt a twinge low in her belly at the startling melody of his voice. 

“Not quite yet,” she said with a lazy smile and purposely dragged her gaze along his entire body before coming back to meet his eyes. Erin watched small lines appear at the corners of his eyes, she hoped he was smiling. 

Without another word, Bane let his eyes fall closed and let his head settle in the center of the hard pillow. 

A short time later an orchestra of footsteps approached Bane’s cell and Erin held her breath as she listened to them unlock the door and enter. She had settled back on her cot when Dr. Cruz was the first man to appear into her line of sight. 

Erin’s smooth forehead pulled into a frown at the appearance of the tall man with the grey sunglasses. 

“You’re looking nice today Erin,” Dr. Erik Gottlieb stated as he stood on the other side of the clear wall in Bane’s cell. His voice was velvety soft, but his eyes never rose from her chest. 

Erin fought to not roll her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest, she mumbled something unintelligible and averted her gaze. 

“It’s been awhile since I’ve paid you a visit, hasn’t it, Erin?” Erik asked her and let his crass thoughts enter his voice. 

Erik smiled at her silence, “I’ll be around soon,” he said before turning his attention to Bane. 

As soon as the attention was off of her, Erin looked to her neighbor’s cell. 

Erik leaned over Bane and forced an eyelid open, he shined a light and watched as the pupil shrank to a pinpoint. 

“Mr. Bane,” Erik began and ran his eyes over his new live test subject. “It seems you are well enough to begin dying.” Erik stood and looked to Bane’s face and was startled at the rage that was present in his eyes even in this state. 

“Are you still Gotham’s reckoning?” Erik asked next, finding himself questioning the integrity of Bane’s restraints. 

“What a lovely, lovely voice you have.” 

Erik appeared visibly shaken at the reply, he was hoping for some measure of fealty or fear. 

Erin stood up from her cot and moved to get a closer view, Bane registered her movement without moving his gaze away from Erik. 

Erik smoothed down his forest green tie and nodded at the third man who was still standing by the cell door. The squat man with a receding hairline stepped forward and passed him a small red cooler with a biohazard symbol emblazoned on its smooth plastic side. 

Erik broke eye contact first and slid open the cooler, he pulled out a plastic syringe that was filled with a bright teal blue liquid. Erin watched as Erik uncapped the needle and probed his cool fingertips on Bane’s forearm. He slid the needle smoothly into Bane’s body and injected the entire contents of the syringe. 

Behind Erik, Dr. Cruz’s mouth nearly hung open and threatened to salivate in anticipation at the effects to come. His cock twitched in his pants at the sounds he was hoping would filter through the mask across the lower part of Bane’s face. Dr. Cruz wanted to hear the articulation of anguish, pain of convulsing muscle fibers, cries from an undulating nervous system. 

All of the men were disappointed as the only outward effect was a brief reddening of Bane’s exposed skin, on the inside it was different. His heart raced and his lungs ached to choke in more air. He restrained the need to gasp for breath as the redness of his skin receded and the men were left looking disappointed again. Downtrodden petulant expressions painted their faces. 

Erik leaned over and whispered to Dr. Cruz. Erin watched while the two men conferred before her eyes looked over Bane. His eyes were still open, and he was staring at the ceiling, she squinted and could see the hand closest to her was half curled into a loose fist, his rough fingertips twitching. 

Bane slid his eyes to the right and caught her gaze, what resembled real empathy was in her eyes. Erin stepped all the way to the clear wall and strained her ears to try and catch what the two doctors were discussing. She caught only snippets.

“…….increase ……decrease……Topamax……amra….”

“IV……Omnicef…raplon?”

Erin shook her head at some of what she heard, she was still frowning when Erik turned and caught her watching. 

Erik’s eyes never left Erin’s as he addressed the two men. “Gentlemen, I think we’re done here. I’m going to make a few notes and I’ll join you upstairs shortly.”

Dr. Cruz and other guy left, Erin held her head up high, trying to feign being confident. 

Erik smirked and gave Bane a departing glance, “tomorrow the real fun shall begin.”

“Would you please just leave me alone?” Erin asked in an annoyed tone as Erik made his way to her cell door and began to unlock it. 

“Oh, well excuse me Erin,” he said drawing out her name with a drawl as he opened the plexi-glass door and locked it behind him. He knew the lock system by touch, he never dropped his eyes from her. “I just thought you might be lonely. I’ve told you that I’d come talk with you anytime you’d like,” he said as he walked towards her. 

“I’ve told you before thank you, but that’s not necessary. Besides, I have a neighbor now,” she said with a stiff nod in Bane’s direction. 

“Him?” Erik scoffed. “He won’t be here long.” 

Bane had stayed completely still as Erik entered her cell, he let his breath fall even slower as he continued to listen.

“Why? What‘s going to happen to him?” Erin asked in a casual tone. 

Erik shook his head, “exactly what he deserves for what he tried to do to Gotham. But it’s nothing that concerns you.”

“What did he try to do to Gotham?” Erin asked in hopes to delay whatever Erik was planning. 

A frown flitted across Erik’s face before he remembered that she hadn’t read a newspaper or knew anything of the happenings of the outside world for nearly two years.

“Allow me to introduce Bane, he believed himself to be Gotham‘s Reckoning. A neutron bomb was going to serve as the tool for Gotham’s liberation,” Erik said with a grand gesture towards Bane’s chemically and physically restrained form. 

Erin glanced back over her shoulder at the man debilitated by IV medications and Kevlar restraints. “But without a working mask, he is essentially helpless,” Erik gloated.

A cold flood passed through Bane at the realization he was a stranger to her pierced his consciousness. 

“If he’s so helpless, why is he restrained?” Erin asked and turned back to Erik. She found he had closed the distance between them, “it’s not him you should be worrying about. I still haven’t decided what to do with you,” he added with a grin.

Erin tried to take a step back, but Erik’s hand shot out and grabbed her upper arm. 

“If you want to keep your eyes, you’ll turn around and put your hands on the wall.” Erik’s voice hissed in her ear and she felt his hand between her shoulder blades pressing her closer to the glass wall. 

Erin closed her eyes when Erik’s hand slipped up to cup and squeeze her breast through her shirt. She refused to let out a single sound as he continued to squeeze harder, she knew she would have bruises as she closed her eyes and tried to escape into her mind. 

Erik’s anger flared when his actions elicited no reaction from her. Frustrated, he grabbed the back of her head and wound his long fingertips through her hair. Erin felt a gasp slip from her lips as he pulled her head back, she wasn’t able to lift her hands in time to lessen the impact when the clear wall was suddenly rushing forward to meet her face.

Bane watched from his cot in the next-door cell as he watched Erik pull back her head and he already knew the sound her face would make when it met the clear wall. Bane gritted his teeth behind his nearly defunct mask, he brought his eyes to Erin’s just as Erik was preparing to smash her forward. 

Erin’s eyes met his for a moment and he saw more anger than fear arising in her gaze. Bane’s eyes never left her face as her nose pushed painfully into the wall and her upper lip burst forth with a small geyser of blood, leaving a distorted crimson kiss on the clear wall. 

Erik let Erin drop to the floor and left her cell, locking the door. He started whistling a cheery jingle as he left her to her throbbing nose and blood spilling split lip. 

Erin’s mood swirled in between seething anger that bled into embarrassment under Bane’s intense gaze. She pressed the heel of her hand against her lip to try and slow the blood flow. 

“One day, I’m going to rip his goddamn face off,” she said in a sharp tone and then grinned. “But, it’s not like I’m going to wear it, or eat it, or anything. I’m not crazy, just a little unbalanced at times,” Erin said with a wink before turning around and crossing her cell to retrieve her thin pale blue sweatshirt. 

Despite her quick movement, Bane hadn’t missed sadness twist her features as she turned from his line of vision. 

“Why not now?” Bane called to her as she slipped the sweater over her head and smoothed it in place.

“Because one day it won’t be enough to just grope me, one day that will fail to satisfy him. That’s the day he’ll want more,” she said turning back to him, her eyes finding his. 

“I’m going to wait until that day. When he drops his pants and exposes his vulnerability, I will kill him,“ she said in a factual tone. 

“As you should my dear,” Bane said holding her gaze a few more moments before turning to look back at the ceiling. His fatigue had been growing and the need for sleep was gnawing at the underside of his eyelids. 

Erin pressed a pair of cotton socks to her nose and mopped away the cooling blood. She walked back and sat in front of the plastic wall. 

“Are you still having pain from whatever they injected into you?”

Her voice carried over to him and he answered while keeping his eyes closed. “It is passing,” came Bane’s indecipherable toned voice. 

“How does your mask work?” Erin asked, her curiosity fully aroused. She bit back a flood of other questions in the chasm of silence before Bane answered. 

“It is a combination of anesthetic gases.”

“Which ones?” she asked as she wiped a fresh line of blood off her chin. 

Bane turned his head slowly and let his eyes find her. Erin shrugged under his direct gaze, “sorry, old habits I guess.”

Bane watched her dab at her nose, he could see a bruise begin to blossom. “Are you also a doctor, like the ones around here.”

“I once was a doctor, but I am absolutely nothing like them. I helped my patients for the better,” she said unable to keep the defensive tone out of her words. 

“Cyclopropane, Xenon, nitrous, a few other inhalants.”

“We need to get out of here,” she stated. All she could taste was her own blood.

“We?” Bane asked with as much surprise as his weakened state allowed. 

“The sooner the better,” she said completely ignoring his question and looking at him expectantly. “I imagine they have put their distorted minds together and come up with something to hurt you,” Erin said with a shake of her head. “They are terrible men,” she added.

“I have not been imprisoned because of my innocence,” Bane said as he shifted as much as his restraints would allow. 

Erin watched as he found a place of some comfort and looked to her for some sort of response. 

“Of that I’m quite sure,” she said as she nodded and arched an eyebrow. “But you don’t deserve what those sick fucks must have come up with.”

“How are you convinced of that?”

“No one deserves what either of those men do on their own, as a collective effort it is terrifying,” Erin said with a near shudder. 

“How do you plan on escaping?”

“Erik has a set of cards and keys that give access to the entire grounds, they are also a master set. I could disable certain parts of this place and give us more running time.” Erin stood with the cotton socks still pressed to her lip and went to her cot. 

She slid a thin metal spring from the cot‘s frame, the coiled metal had been slowly straightened and over time rubbed against the concrete floor. 

The corners of Bane’s lifted in a grin as she held up the spring, now a sizable dagger’s length and wickedly sharp. 

“Check this out,” Erin said as she drew the gleaming steel across her index finger and a thin line opened. 

A bead of blood immediately rushed to meet the air and drip down the length of her finger. Bane watched her squeeze her fingertip and force a few more fat drops before pressing her thumb against the cut to urge it to close.

“It slides in whisper soft and parts the flesh like liquid silk,” she said in a near dreamy tone.

Bane watched her spilled blood began to dry on the grey floor. 

“If I help you escape from here, will you help me?”

“What is your fee for securing my release from here?”

“If any of what Erik said was true, could you secure me with money and a new identity? I want to travel overseas and open a practice, go back to helping people with their pain.”

“Their pain?”

“I was a trauma surgeon in one of the downtown hospitals. I also worked with pain management therapy before my arrival here,” Erin said waving her arm to her plain cell. 

“You have my word that I will help you in any way that I can.”

“Can I trust your word?”

“I can’t make that decision for you.”

“I think I could help you with your pain?” Erin said and Bane took that to mean she had more than agreed.


	2. Champagne and Caviar

“How would you begin to do that?” Bane asked as his mind dissected each of her words. 

“Well, provided I had access to a surgical suite or makeshift setting and with a thorough exam, I might be able to detect musculoskeletal abnormalities that I could repair. It’d also help to have access to a lab; I could run some blood panels.” She continued to list other needs she’d like to get her imprisoned hands on.

Bane watched her as she tentatively touched her nose as she spoke. Erin winced as she felt the bridge of her nose for any fracturing. 

“Have you had any trouble breathing or any chest pain?” Erin asked and felt a measure of relief as soon as she realized her nose wasn’t broken. 

“Breathing is at times uncomfortable.” 

“Will you be mobile as soon as I put your mask back together?”

“In a very short time,” he answered and stifled a groan as a spasm of pain washed across his body. 

“If Erik brings the dinner tray, that means it’s past midnight,” Erin said and paused when she recognized the signs of someone suppressing their reaction to pain.

“Go on,” he said when she stopped talking. 

“That shift is only staffed by two people, a doctor and a tech. The tech sort of doubles as security. He comes by with a flashlight sometimes,” she said rolling her eyes. 

“I heard Erik complaining once to someone on the phone about being here with only one other support person,” Erin added when Bane turned all of his attention on her. 

Bane found that he was able to let some of his pain dull under the shine of having a conversation with her. She didn’t see him as a terrorist or threat to humanity. 

Bane continued to ask her questions to distract himself from the waves of pain throughout his abdomen, he remembered every word she said. As he committed the sound of her breathing to his memory, her voice halted at the sound of approaching footsteps. 

She knew it was another night of a floppy chicken flavored meat substance with the semblance of rice as she saw an older tech walk to her cell with the plastic tray. Erin pushed the chicken type meat to the side and ate part of the lukewarm rice, she drained the squat glass of cranberry juice and pushed the tray towards the door. 

She fetched her thin blanket from the bed and wrapped it around herself before returning to the clear dividing wall. As she leaned against the plexi glass, they discussed the intricacies of her escape plan. She presented an invasive verbal dissection of the plan she had been formulating since the duration of her incarceration, it had never seemed possible until now. 

Eventually she was stifling yawns and laid down on her own cot.

“He didn’t ask me of my crimes”, she later thought before sleep wrapped its comforting arms around her.

While she slept, Bane stared at the clear ceiling. His head seemed to be wrapped in a vice grip, his eyes tight. He listened to her breathing rate decline as she relaxed deeper into sleep, he flexed his arms and felt a surge of rage when he couldn’t move his arms up more than an inch. 

Bane’s mind processed his grief, anger and perhaps now a chance for hope of an escape. His thoughts went to Bruce Wayne, the anointed savior of Gotham City and his lady love Selina Kyle who bested many of his men. Behind his busted mask, he clenched his teeth until his jaw popped as he thought of the beautiful duo frolicking across the globe, champagne filled cruises and caviar laden forests. 

Bane’s tumultuous mind eventually found a small amount of rest.

The prison lights went on and off at random intervals and eventually Erin stirred from her nap. She was lying on her back in a sort of light sleep as she daydreamed about the day she was free from this place.

She was forced from her thoughts when the faint sounds of footsteps first reached Bane’s ears. 

Erin glanced over at Bane as Erik appeared with her evening tray, she began to feel the faint threads of hope wrap around her body and she fought to keep from flexing her fingers. Any hope that had started, faltered in growth when Erik didn’t continue towards her cell but instead opened the lock and walked into Bane’s cell. 

Erik set her plastic dinner tray on the floor and Erin squinted at the manila folder that was lying next to the flimsy plate and plastic utensils. Erik smirked at her before he picked up the file and gave Bane all of his attention.

Erik tried not to squirm under the intensity of Bane’s return gaze. He cleared his throat and opened the stiff folder. “I thought instead of injecting you with something just to see what happens, that I might read to you instead,” Erik stated as he smiled broadly down at Bane. 

“This is, uh, Talia’s autopsy report.”

Bane’s eyes bled to black at Erik’s spoken words. 

“The medical examiner is a good friend of mine,” Erik said as his eyes moved over the page. “I’ve got photos too,” he gloated before he began to read aloud. 

“The decedent appears to be a well-nourished and developed female,” Erik started and paused. “Let’s skip ahead to the juicy stuff, shall we?” he asked and delved further into the report. 

“The body is cool to the touch, there is an absence of rigor mortis,” he continued and looked over the paper to see what sort of reaction he was eliciting from Bane. 

Erik clenched his jaw when he couldn’t glean anything from his still and restrained subject. He continued to read Talia’s autopsy report. 

“Dried blood is observed at the mouth and nostril area, a presence of moderate postmortem lividity is also noted.”

Bane let his conscious mind retreat and removed himself from the emotional aspect of Erik’s words, 

“Severe hemoperitoneum,” Erik said and lifted his eyebrows as he continued to read. “Hmmm, 1300cc’s of blood in her belly.”

“Total transection of her cervical spine,” he said as he pulled a glossy photo from the folder and held it in front of Bane’s face. 

“Look at the goddamn photo before I make you feel pain that few have had the pleasure of experiencing.” 

Erik’s near snarl was spoken close to Bane’s face. “I own you now, you can ’t be moved from that cot without my strict and express permission.”

Erik’s reddened face began to drain of color when Bane spoke, his voice although weakened with pain still held authority and the promise of deliberate pain.

“And you believe that gives you power over me?”

Erin had stayed still; all of her senses violently awake. She listened and knew the end of this Talia’s life would have been full of physical anguish from the blood rushing to her rapidly distending abdominal cavity. Erin knew from Bane’s stiff limbs that he was containing his rage; her heart fell when Erik looked his shoulder at her. 

When their eyes met, his smile returned. “Erin, I do hope you didn’t think I forgot about you. I have your dinner, right here,” he said stopping to retrieve her tray and leaving Bane’s cell. 

Erin faced the cell door that he unlocked and felt her pulse jump in her throat. She had slid the makeshift knife up her sweater sleeve when Erik’s footsteps had first sounded in the hall. 

“Erik could you please just leave the tray, I’m not feeling very talkative today.”

“Oh, what’s the matter baby? You got a little headache, maybe your tummy-wummy hurts. Here, let me take a look,” Erik mocked as he walked towards her. 

Erin gritted her teeth; she hated the feeling of being prey. Erik ran his eyes over her until she felt like she was going to bite through her tongue. 

Erik swung his fist low and connected with Erin’s belly, she was prepared for his strike and uttered a low grunt as he made contact and stumbled backwards yet maintained her footing. She had time for a smirk when she saw his frown twist his lips when she didn‘t fall to the ground. Erin took two large steps toward him and invoked her inner defensive pro football tackler as she was able to throw him off balance. 

Erin drew her knee up to his groin and smashed his testicles that were only protected by his expensive slacks and plain white boxers. Erin practically gave a victory shout as Erik’s breath left his body and he dropped to his knees; she was soon forgotten as his hands went to cup his rapidly swelling groin. 

Erik felt acidic bile rise up in his throat and the taste of those stale snicker doodle cookies that had served for his dinner threatened to eject from his stomach. He soon became focused on a new pain. A pain that was sharper, deeper, and fatal. 

Erin followed Erik to the ground and pushed him to the floor until he was flat on his back. She drew her right hand up to his abdomen again, her fist closed around the long metal cot spring she had shown off to Bane. 

Erik managed a high-pitched squeal as the metal slid into his flesh with the familiarity of a lover.

“Do you like this?” Erin whispered in his ear as she pressed the steel as far as she could into his dying body. Erik’s flaccid flesh sucked on the cool metal that she repeatedly plunged into his soft, pale belly.

As her right hand continued to push the modified steel in and out of his body, wetly fucking him to death, her left hand pressed against his pale neck that bore the barest whisper of dark stubble.

“I’m penetrating you, I‘m inside you,” Erin hissed as she brought her lips to his ear. His body bucked and convulsed underneath her. “Oh, you still want me baby?” she giggled and pulled the straightened pin of steel completely free of his abdomen that was ejaculating dark blood from perforated arteries. Erik’s arms batted harmlessly on her arms, fumbling weakly at her. Infantile whimpers fell from his quivering lips, blood and saliva mixed to form thin, falling rivulets on either side of his mouth. 

Under her palm she could feel his rapid and erratic pulse, it quickly dwindled to the slightest of beats as his body succumbed to near complete exsanguination. Erin’s own heart seemed to gain a beat when she felt Erik slip into death.

Bane watched her as she smiled down on Erik’s face that had drained to a pasty white. Bane watched a myriad of emotions pass over Erin’s face, he found his curiosity ever fed by seeing no sign of regret, sorrow, or remorse. Instead, her eyes were bright and shining, her lips were pulled into a full and unashamed smile. As crystal-clear fat tears rolled down 

Erik’s still face, she reached into the cotton pocket over Erik’s breast and removed his plastic access cards and key ring. Erin turned and locked eyes with Bane as he lay on his cot, watching her. 

Erin’s smile remained and she stood slowly, a foot planted on either side of Erik’s dead form.

You like what you see?” she asked in a teasing tone. 

It seemed her words were still in the air when his voice erupted. 

“Yes,” he answered without pause. 

Erin cleared her throat and averted her eyes when his gaze became overwhelming. Bane watched her turn away as blood went rushing to her face. 

Erin crouched back down to Erik’s still form, the metallic odor of blood filled her nose and mouth as she searched through his pockets. Erik’s shirt had blossomed into a crimson flower with spreading blood saturated petals from his nearly eviscerated soft belly. 

Bane watched as she rifled through Erik’s wallet, her face was wearing a serene expression. She calmly but quickly extracted the few paper bills from the wallet as well as a stack of shiny, plastic credit cards.

Erin pulled her pillowcase free of the thin pillow and shoved her looted acquisitions into it before she paused as she took in her bloody hands, arms and blood splattered chest and body. She wiped her hands pretty ineffectively on her bed linen before a giggle escaped her lips. 

Erin looked over at Bane and found his eyes already on her. 

“Sorry,” she said with a lazy shake of her head. “I was just thinking the first thing I’m going to do when we get out of here, is to take a long, hot bubble bath.”

Erin felt her lips pull into a goofy smile as she slid the key into the cell lock. The sound of the tumblers engaging made her bite her lip with delicious anticipation and she almost skipped out the open door but restrained herself.

Bane felt his own anticipation grow at the sound of her turning a key in his cell door. The next sound that reached his ears was her breathing that grew rapid and shallower as she approached him.

His eyes traced a path up her body, the blood coated slim fingers of her left hand were clutched around the sunny yellow pillowcase. Bane’s eyes followed the line of her neck, the smooth skin was dotted with Jackson Pollack style blood drops. He paused briefly at her pulse, beating erratically, caged under her skin. 

His gaze lazily made a trail up and skimmed over her lips and found her eyes. 

Erin felt like a trapped bird under his gaze, she felt a faint flicker of pride that her voice held the barest of trembles when she spoke. 

“We should think about going.”

Bane let his body fall still as she tentatively closed the distance between them, she narrowed her eyes down at the mask that wrapped around the lower part of his face. 

Erin tossed the pillowcase aside and wiped her hands down the front of her shirt, the drying blood had become tacky on her hands. She gently moved her fingertips over his mask, her short nails began to push and pull at the metal tubes and clasps. 

While she deftly straightened what had become bent and aligned that which had fallen into chaos, Bane’s pain had receded somewhat because of her proximity, a placebo effect, but recession, nonetheless. He inhaled so softly that she didn’t detect the sound, her distraction on his mask was plentiful. Bane could distinguish the light kiss of vanilla and an even fainter brush of menthol past the overwhelming smell of spilled blood. The coppery presence in the air coated his next inhalation, the scent of death raped the oxygen molecules around them. 

After Erin had secured what she thought was the last disconnected coil, she lifted her hands from the mask’s cool surface and brought her eyes to his. She was searching for the moment that he experienced relief from his pain. She knew from the past, if you looked close enough, you could see anguish bleed away from the eyes. 

Bane felt the slight tick his mask made before the anesthetic gases began a slow start of releasing from their newly reattached valves. He took a couple deep inhales, holding each breath captive in his lungs, before releasing it in a slow count of eight. 

Erin watched him, fascinated, and intrigued by the very presence that returned to his body. Fear had been invited to her emotions, it hung back in the shadows, but as she watched his pain dissipate, she became more and more aware of how much strength he held. 

Erin hesitated for a moment before settling her hand on his broad chest over his heart, she let her eyes fall closed as she felt his heart beating under her palm. Her breath quickened as her own heart began racing. Erin felt her face flush with color as she memorized the feel of his firm flesh under her fingertips. 

Bane remained still as Erin pressed her hand against his chest. He smiled behind his mask at the pink hue that filled her face and he didn’t miss her increase in breath. She opened her eyes and looked at him, her expression held the words she was afraid to let fall from her lips. 

His body was tingling as the nerve endings that had been screaming were soothed by an opiate that was mixed in with the other anesthetics. His ragged pain was smoothed over by the narcotic flash flood, his conscious mind resurfaced, devoid of the stranglehold of unrelenting physical torture. Bane flexed his fingers under the restraints and his voice when spoken held an edge of amusement. 

“Are you going to undo those?” he asked referring to the restraints.

Erin arched an eyebrow, “I’m certain that you don’t need me to.”

Bane glanced down at her hand that was still resting on his chest. Without a spoken reply he clenched his hands into fists and snapped his forearms upwards. The restraints fell away, his raw force made the straps slip from his skin with the appearance of no effort. 

Erin lifted her hand and stepped away from Bane when he sat up and swung his legs over the side of the cot. He felt a tingling rush up his spine that spread throughout his body at the sudden rush of sitting upright. 

The thin blue cotton gown was loosely tied at Bane’s shoulders, the threadbare fabric threatened to slip away from his body as he stood. He stretched his arms high overhead and the only sound was his joints crackle and pop. Erin fought to not take a step back, she fixed her face in what she hoped was a neutral expression as she looked up at him.  
From his full height, Bane loomed over her, he blocked out the artificial overhead light and his shadow fell across her face. 

Her nervousness was pulsing rhythmically in her veins, she held up the key ring and shook them. The metallic melody sounded, “ready to go?”

Bane could feel her anxiety radiating from her in waves from where she stood. “Ready when you are, doctor.”

That seemed to snap her out of her fog, “oh, please not so formal. Besides a few of my licenses have probably expired, call me Erin.”

“Ready when you are Erin,” he repeated and watched her cross the cell to the door. 

They exited the cell, letting the lock click quietly as it shut.


	3. Never?

The pair made their way down the narrow hall that led to a sturdy metal paneled door. Erin went through four keys before she found the one that opened the door. She knew there would be at least one other person in the building and held her breath as they went around each corner. 

Bane and Erin were making their way down a small staircase when his hand was suddenly on the back of her shirt, roughly pulling her backwards while yelling out a warning. Erin’s eyes barely had time to focus on the end of a metal crowbar that was heading towards her face in a dangerous downward arc. 

The squat man who had stood silently in Bane’s cell the other day swung the metal rod towards Erin’s face and because of his height, his full reach and Bane’s interference only let the metal place a rough kiss against her already damaged upper lip. The cold metal opened the split in her skin and fresh blood filled the inside of her lip and rained from her face. The warm blood landed in fat drops on her already stained clothes. 

Bane’s hand was around the man’s neck before Erin had even completely landed on the bottom two steps of the stairs. The metal edges of the steps bit into the flesh of her hips and back of her thighs and calves. She let out a low hiss as she struggled to sit upright. 

Erin’s eyes followed the line of Bane’s body as he held the shorter man suspended off the ground by his neck. The squat man’s feet kicked helplessly in the air, he had dropped the crowbar and frantically grabbed at Bane’s muscular forearm. Unintelligible and slobbering slurs emitted from his mouth in between gasps. 

Erin felt her mouth open slightly when she heard the hearty crack of his neck, she watched the limp body fall to the floor in a flaccid heap. 

Bane turned towards her as she stood on shaky feet. “I’m fine,” she said and knelt to search the dead man’s body. He didn’t have any credit cards, just a few customer appreciations cards to a few hardware stores and an auto warehouse club. He had a nice amount of cash though and she was glad to add that to her pillowcase. 

“That’s supposed to be it,” she said as she pressed her shirt cuff to her mouth and felt the fabric threads start to bloat with her finally slowing flow of blood. “We should hurry though, he might have alerted someone,” she said nodding at the body. 

Bane nodded and the two of them headed through several rooms that were filled with lab equipment, leather exam chairs and tables and several doors marked with fluorescent orange biohazard stickers. 

After a couple twists and turns they ended up in a nearly deserted parking lot. Erin blew out a sharp breath and felt an instant measure of relief when they faced only two cars in the parking lot. 

The closest parked car was a pale grey convertible with a lot of engine and horsepower for days, the other car was a nondescript black sedan. “I hope it’s this one,” Erin said with a grin to Bane as she pressed the car alarm button and gestured to the high-end convertible. 

The chirping sounded from the dark sedan and she shrugged as they made their way to the unimpressive car. “It’s probably better it’s this one,” she said aloud. “That other one doesn’t really blend,” she added with a laugh and unlocked the car as they approached. 

Erin could hear each of Bane’s exhalations as they closed the distance to the car, a brief frown fluttered across her forehead as she was certain his breathing was beginning to sound labored. She turned with the intention of asking if he was doing okay and had her answer when Bane raised a hand to his throat and began to violently cough as he dropped to one knee. 

Erin reached his side as his hands fumbled and pulled at his mask. Bane’s eyes were squeezed shut as his heart and lungs began to struggle in his chest.

Erin wasn’t able to help cushion his fall as he crashed heavily to the cracked pavement, she eased her smaller hands under his and with her slimmer fingers was able to unfasten the titanium clasps on his mask.

She pulled the mask free and leaned back grimacing, closing her eyes, and turning her face away as the pungent aroma of rotting fruit reached her nose. Erin flipped the mask over, and her eyes immediately found the small metal vial that was wired to the aerosol delivery system. 

“That pig,” she hissed as she knew this had to be Dr. Cruz’s handiwork and tossed the mask to the side. Erin pressed her fingertips into Bane’s neck, anxious for the feel of a strong carotid pulse. 

The drumbeat under her fingers was erratic and his chest heaved with the effort of each inhalation. 

Bane felt the tide of pain come rushing back and wrap itself around him intimately as soon as she lifted the mask free of his face, he felt her cool fingers come to rest on his neck.   
He could hear her mumbling to herself, he was only able to discern random words with the coughing and retching that was overcoming his body now that the mask was free of his face. 

“Oxygen….pulmonary……hemoptysis.”

Bane rolled to his side as a spasm of pain ripped across his body, blood ran from the corner of his mouth. 

“Go get whatever you think you’ll need from inside doctor,” he rasped as more blood welled from between his lips. 

“Just leave you here?” Erin asked as she wiped at the thin line of blood leaking from his mouth. 

“I won’t die while you are gone,” he managed.

Erin ran her hands over him as she assessed his condition, her concern began to be alleviated when his color slowly began to return to normal and less blood fell from his lips. With the mask’s near fatal contents off his body, Bane’s pain flooded back to override his respiratory distress. 

As Erin ran back to the facility, she shot a few looks back over her shoulder. Bane was still lying on his side. 

She sprinted up the last steps that opened to the laboratory and storage closets. Erin’s eyes skimmed the unorganized shelves and her hands flew to various small boxes and bottles, her eyes dropped to the closet floor and a dusty roll of trash bags. 

The bright overhead lights reflected dully on the plastic bag she shook open and began stuffing it with IV bags and starter kits. Erin crossed the lab to the shelf of controlled narcotics and huffed when she found the cabinet locked. Her eyes flew to a rack of dull green oxygen tanks, she hefted one from its wire tomb and used it to batter the glass cabinet until she could sweep the contents of the shelf into the bag. She flinched when glass splinters opened up a few small cuts on her hands. 

Erin hoisted the bag over her shoulder and was able to secure the oxygen tank under her arm, she paused for a second to check the gauge on the tank and was relieved to find it full.

Erin scanned the room one final time and her eyes landed on a stack of file folders with bold printing, she moved to the stack and thumbed through a variety of unrecognizable names. Her hands began to shake when she found her name and Bane’s a few files later, she shoved both into the bag, intending on reading what they had been planning on doing with her. Bane’s file would hopefully yield a surgical history and what else they might have done to him. She was moving slower on her return trip with the weight of the tank and bag of goodies. 

Erin’s tension waned a bit when Bane’s form came back into view as she tried to jog towards him, she had to settle for a fast walk. 

“You’re still alive,” she said as she settled down next to him and began rooting around in the plastic bag. 

“I keep my word,” Bane said as her hand closed around a glass vial of morphine. 

The burning in his lungs was still present but his breathing was coming easier with the removal of the toxic gas. Erin’s eyes were on his as she depressed the syringe, the narcotic swirled through his body and soothed him. As the drug did its job, she loaded the stuffed garbage bag in the trunk. When she returned to his side, she could see he was feeling worlds better, his gaze was back to being deliberate and his eyes followed her movement as she squatted down next to him. 

“Can you walk?” she asked and let her eyes fall to his mouth. His lips were stained with blood that had been expelled from his body with his painful body-wracking spasms and coughing. She started to let her gaze move past his lips and the scars that crisscrossed his lower face, but his sudden standing upright broke her from her visual exploration. 

“Quite ready,” Bane said as the drug made his skin tingle and for the moment allowed the pain to recede. 

“I’ll drive, you need oxygen now,” Erin stated opening the passenger before retrieving the dented oxygen tank at the rear of the car. She shook her head as she had to open the trunk and root around for a plastic wrapped oxygen mask. 

Bane had turned and watched her with interest as she mumbled to herself and directed her attention back to him, she frowned to see that he hadn’t climbed into the passenger seat. 

“You, in the car,” she said holding up the oxygen mask and tubing. “Please get in the car,” Erin repeated when he remained standing. 

Bane had to struggle to not smile, he finally gave her a stiff nod and settled on the smooth passenger seat of the sedan. Erin suppressed her own smile as she lifted the oxygen tank and positioned it on the car’s console, she unwound the plastic tubing and connected it to the tank. Erin turned towards him to slip the mask over his head, as she slid the elastic band of the mask above his ears, her fingertips brushed against his skin. 

With the powerful narcotic coursing through his body and making his senses feel more alive, the light touch of her skin was electric. She froze as she adjusted the plastic over his nose and mouth when Bane lifted his hand and cupped her jaw, he brushed his thumb along the line of her jaw. 

His rough skin smoothed across her skin, without dropping her eyes from his, she snaked her hand to the tank’s dial. “You need oxygen , take a few deep breaths.” Bane allowed his lungs to fill and expand as he memorized the flakes of amber in her green eyes before he dropped his hand from her face. 

“Are you comfortable?” Erin asked and let his seat recline before breaking away from his gaze and allowing her eyes to look him over. She was seeking any worsening signs of pain or discomfort; his breathing had nearly returned to a normal state. 

“Quite.”

Erin nodded and shut his car door, she slipped the key into the ignition and was relieved when it started with no engine hiccups. The car radio had been tuned to a classical music station and soon Bach’s Symphony Number One filled the inside of the car. Erin pressed the accelerator to the floor and the car nearly fishtailed as she drove them out of the converted warehouse. 

The standard six-cylinder sedan emerged from the warehouse into the dead of night, moonlight bathed the surface of the pitted pavement that Erin steered the car along. She scanned the dark for structures or recognizable landmarks. 

Bane could see the small steps Gotham City had been taking in slowly rebuilding itself, rising from its hobbled state to once again try and live. Erin wasn’t sure where to drive and he stayed silent in the passenger seat, a quick sidelong glance confirmed he was riding the narcotic waves. She turned back to looking out the windshield after he blinked ever so slow and visibly relaxed, the seat groaned in protest at his size and stature.

Erin risked another glance at him and was surprised to see him already looking in her direction. She cleared her throat, “is there anywhere in particular that you’d like me to drive? I won’t blend like this,” she added gesturing to her blood-stained self. 

The powerful strains of Mussorgsky begin to pour from the car’s speakers and Erin was glad for the beautiful distraction. 

“Where did you used to call home?” Bane asked as she looked back out at the bleak night. 

“I had a house, kind of on the outskirts of the city. I imagine it’s probably now owned by someone else.”

“Drive there,” he stated. 

“Okay,” she started with a shrug, “what if people are living there? Then what, I‘ve certainly defaulted on my loan?”

“There are places in Gotham that are known by few,” he answered cryptically.

Erin didn’t reply, instead she let herself be carried up in the brilliance of Mussorgsky’s symphony, Night on Bare Mountain. She had to wind around various side streets to avoid the road construction crews that were busy working while most of Gotham was sleeping. 

Erin became strangely nostalgic as she took the exit that would eventually spill out onto a narrow road that became gravel. She always knew she was home when the tires of her car would kiss the small pebbles and announce their union as she drove till the end of the driveway and put the car in park. 

As the sharp turn-off neared, Erin found herself getting excited at the idea of seeing her home again. The headlights of the car illuminated the right turn and soon she found herself driving down the long driveway. 

She switched on the high-beams and lit up the door to the one car garage, she angled the car to the left so that the lights would flood the front porch. She left the keys in the ignition and climbed out of the car, she was too wrapped up in her own memories to hear Bane discard the oxygen mask and walk up beside her. 

She let a hopeful smile peek out and went up the couple steps to the cracked front door. A casual glance across the front of the house, revealed boarded up windows and sagging   
gutters. 

Erin looked back over her shoulder as she gave the door a tentative push, followed by a healthy nudge. To her amazement, after an initial grating sound of steel scraping steel, the door budged open an inch. 

Bane wordlessly reached out and shoved the door completely open, dust and stagnant air were stirred up and formed a haze that they walked through. She covered her mouth and stifled a sneeze as he led the way into the quaint two-story home. 

Erin’s heart jumped in her chest when she heard the male voice sound from the room that used to serve as her kitchen. 

“Who the fuck are you and what’re ya doin’ in my motherfucking house?”

Bane stepped forward as three men walked through the low archway that led into the kitchen. 

The lead male was younger upon closer inspection, Erin thought as he drew nearer. “We’re not here to cause trouble,” she said reverting back to her night shifts in the emergency room with kids like him hopped up on whatever drug they could get their hot, little hands on. 

“Hey, look lady. You and this scarred up motherfucker broked and entered my home, you gotta pay a fine now,” the nameless youth said as he rubbed a hand down the crotch of his low-slung jeans.

Bane seemed to stand even taller and his eyes bled to black as he addressed the speaker of the vagrant group.

“I will allow you this one opportunity to walk out the door,” Bane stated in an empty tone, devoid of any readable emotions. 

“Hey, this is America motherfucker, we can do what we please,” the sandy-haired blonde boy stated with bloated authority. The other two boys laughed nervously and mumbled similar phrases until Bane swept his gaze over them. 

Neither of the two boys serving as an audience, would laugh again for a while upon seeing Bane’s hand move with lightning fast speed and grip the blonde boy’s throat. With the appearance of zero effort, Bane lifted the youth off the ground, his feet kicked helplessly as he dangled. 

“Please don’t kill him, he’s just a kid,” Erin asked, glad her voice didn’t carry the sound of pleading. 

Bane glanced over at her and back to the feeble boy whose lips were beginning to turn blue. Without any grace, he released his grip and the boy dropped heavily to the ground,   
panting and gasping. The two other boys who had gone still, snapped out of their trance and gripped their near tears friend by either arm as they tore out of the rundown house. 

“Do you think they’ll come back?” she asked as Bane watched the frightened trio retreat. 

In the space before he answered her question, Bane held the gaze of the young blonde who had turned wide eyes back at them as they ran away. His pupils had shriveled to pinpricks and beads of sweat had blossomed above his trembling upper lip. His skin had gone sickly pale before he turned on his heel and ran away. 

Bane turned back towards her, “no, they won’t return.”

“I can’t believe I’m actually standing here again,” she said walking past him into the kitchen. The table her parents had bought her was still standing, although it had seen better days. The nameless boys had several squat candles lit and the spill of the light let her see the disgusting images and phrases carved into the table’s surface.  
There was also an assortment of drug paraphernalia and it was now quite obvious that they had interrupted them at an important time. Erin picked up one of the fat glowing candles and followed the countertop to the dirty stainless-steel sink. She turned the faucet and nearly squealed with girlish delight when the water spurted but eventually began to flow. 

“That’s all I need,” she said with a laugh and pointed at the growing flow of water that made the muck flake away from the sides of the sink.

“I’m going to check upstairs, see if there are any clothes left,“ she said as she turned the water off. 

“How’re you feeling, do you need anything?” Erin asked as he stood in the doorway watching her. 

“I’ll accompany you upstairs,” he answered, and she took that to mean he was feeling okay for the moment. Erin followed him up the creaking staircase, she sighed as the weak candlelight showed each of her footfalls landed on threadbare and heavily stained carpet. A veritable Rosetta Stone of old blood, vomit and other bodily fluids had soaked into the remaining carpet fibers over the length of her absence. 

The upstairs was a wreck, her antique dresser and bed frame had been dismantled and was strewn down the short hallway. Surprisingly, the door to her bedroom was still on its hinges, Bane didn’t need the wan light from the flickering flame to see the colorful graffiti that adorned her bedroom walls. 

Erin shook her head at the mess and started sorting through piles of trash and her bedding that had been tossed to the floor during her bed’s demolition. Bane watched as she sifted through old newspapers and stale cigarette butts, she moved to a different messy pile and found a pair of inside out black yoga pants with a faded pattern. 

She found a shirt the corner of the room as Bane continued to watch her silently, “I’m not sure if there’s anything you can change into,” she called to him. He looked down at the loose medical scrub type pants he was wearing and the thin gown she had fashioned into an almost shirt by tying some of the fabric together in a crude knot. 

“That’s not important.”

Erin shrugged and walked into the small adjoining bathroom, she held the candle above the edge of the bathtub and saw it wasn’t filled with trash like the kitchen sink. She set the slow-burning candle on the floor and felt around on the floor for any kind of soap, whether it be a sliver of soap or baby shampoo. 

Wedged behind the toilet was a plastic bottle of body wash, she screwed off the cap and was met with the fresh scent of lemon verbena. Erin turned to Bane who was veiled in shadows as he leaned against the open doorway. 

“I’m going to take a shower,” she said looking up at him. “Could you bring the bag in from the trunk?”

“I’ll be downstairs when you’re done,” he finally said and left her to the pigsty of a bathroom. 

As soon as she heard his heavy footsteps retreat down the stairs and out the front door, Erin cranked the faucet and quickly stripped out of her bloody clothes. The frigid water bit into her skin as she stood under the spray, but she had been acclimated to cold showers over the past two plus years. She squeezed the plastic bottle and dumped the bath gel into her palm, she worked up a thick lather and began to scrub her skin clean. 

She emptied more the soap into her hair and scrubbed at her scalp until it tingled under her fingertips. When she felt sufficiently clean, she turned off the water and patted her skin dry with some torn and discarded strips of her sky-blue bed linen.

While Erin showered and then dressed, Bane had pulled the keys from the car’s ignition and brought the bloated plastic bag into the small kitchen. He found a rickety chair to sit on and looked inside the garbage bag she had gone on a shopping spree with. 

Bane was surprised when his eyes found his mask that Dr. Cruz had tampered with. He remembered her throwing it to the side but missed when she made a last split-second decision and tossed it in the bag. He pulled his mask free from the plastic tomb and turned it over, examining where Dr. Cruz had added the deadly inhalant. 

Bane heard Erin descending the stairs, she paused in the doorway and watched as he pulled straightened one of the metallic conduits and tilted the mask until an impossibly small Kingston flash drive fell into his awaiting palm. 

“What is that?” she asked as she squinted at the barely three-centimeter-wide square in his large hand. 

“Gotham’s final trial by fire.”

“What does that mean?” she asked when he failed to elaborate. 

Bane looked up from his palm and brought his eyes to her face and the frown that was developing between her eyebrows. “What does it sound like my dear doctor?”

“Nothing good,” she said after a pause and looked down at her feet before stepping into the kitchen and walking towards where he sat. Bane titled his head with interest as she covered her mouth but was unable to prevent a giggle from escaping her lips. 

“May I ask what is amusing you?” he asked.

Erin pressed her lips together and tried to suppress a devious grin. “I’ve always wondered what it would feel like to pull the tiger’s tail.”

Bane then watched with initially more shock than anger as Erin’s hand shot out and slapped his hand that was palming the small chip. The plastic square flew from his hand and landed silently on the scuffed linoleum. 

He watched as she narrowly avoided his reach, she seemed to move in slow motion as she plucked the small chip from the scratched and deeply grooved linoleum. Erin gave a victory yell that could have rivaled those uttered by William Wallace and pinched the chip between her fingers as she waved it in the air. 

Bane put his hand out, the palm facing up. “You need to return that now doctor,” he said quietly. 

“No, not unless you say the magic word,” she taunted.

“Please,” Bane said dangerously.

His word were laced with danger and part of her mind screamed at her to turn back. “No,” she said smiling wickedly. “You are going to have to catch me,” she said running out of the room laughing.

Bane followed and stood at the base of the stairs and looked up at her. She was on the sixth step and just slightly out of reach. Erin’s eyes sparkled as she scrambled further up the steps, Bane had no choice but to pursue her. 

Bane heard one of the upstairs doors slam as he neared the top of the stairs, he leaned against the wall outside of the closed door. He twisted the handle and found it locked. 

“Erin?” he called through the closed door. 

“Yes?” she replied softly. Bane could picture her smiling as she teased him from behind the closed door. 

Her change of clothes had not gone unnoticed. The inside out pants ended up being adorned with delicate cherry blossoms, the shirt she had found was a musty smelling deep red tank top. The fabric stretched snug across her breasts and his eyes had lingered on the narrow straps that held her top in place as she had waved the chip in the air.

“Do you think this locked door makes you safe?”

“No, of course not,” she said airily before pausing a heartbeat. Erin bit her lip as she continued, “but I don’t have much to bargain with.”

Bane ignored her statement, “you need your sleep doctor, open the door and give me the chip,” he said in a tone that had caused hardened men to lose control of their bladders or surrender their cache of weapons. That effect was lost on Erin as she reverted right back to giggling, “well, that’s going to be a problem.”

Before Bane could ask exactly what the problem was, she quickly finished her sentence. “I seemed to have misplaced it.” 

Bane didn’t have to exert much effort before the door was simply completely off its hinges and discarded on the floor, much like a stray receipt that happened to flutter from a grocery bag. 

Bane noticed the dull glow in the room and saw that she found a few more mismatched candles and had lit them on an upended cardboard box. 

Erin was standing in the middle of the room, her eyes slightly widened as Bane walked in through the damaged doorway. He felt his lips threaten to pull into a small smile as his eyes found the rapid rise and fall of her chest. He let his hands hang loose at his side as he watched Erin’s eyes dart around the room, looking for a way to dart past him.   
Bane was standing in front of the only exit. “You don’t have a way out of here doctor,” he said toying with her. “Now, where did you lose my chip?” Bane asked as he took a step closer to her. 

Erin smiled and winked through her dancing nerves, “I’ll never tell.”

“Never?” he asked, “you shouldn’t say something like that.”


	4. Join Me

While he spoke, he moved closer to her very slowly. Erin registered him closing in and faked a lunge to the left and then pivoted sharply and bolted right. Bane seemed to anticipate her every movement, she watched the carpet rise up to meet her as Bane’s powerful arms caught her around the waist and lowered her to the floor.  


Erin shook her head and brushed her hair out of her eyes as she found herself looking up into Bane’s face. The sparse carpet fibers grazed the exposed skin on her back where her tank top had shifted in her controlled fall. 

“Well, doctor? Where did you put it?” Bane asked leaning closer to Erin. She could feel his warm breath that accompanied each word brush across her skin. 

“I don’t rightly recall,” she managed coyly. Erin watched his eyes fill with an unreadable emotion, she started to feel like caught prey when he caught her slim wrists and held her arms back against the carpet.

Bane pressed himself closer to her and whispered into her ear. Erin’s breath caught in her throat as she felt the pressure from his lower body pressed against hers. She gasped as his bare skin brushed across the naked skin below her bellybutton. 

“I have ways of making you talk,” he whispered in a teasing tone against her ear. Erin shivered as he looked down the length of their bodies and the soft skin of her stomach that was vulnerable to his gaze. As Bane spoke in her ear, he inhaled the citrus scent of the soap she had found in the bathroom. His eyes trailed down her body and lingered on the swell of her breasts and stopped at the line of skin above her pants.

Bane slid a hand from her wrist and followed the line of her arm and down her side. He moved that hand to span her flat belly. Erin trembled as he traced slow, lazy circles on her stomach. “Would you like to tell me now?” he asked as his hand never slowed in its movement. 

“What happens when you get the chip back?” she asked and struggled not to squirm under his gaze and touch. 

Bane ignored her question. “After you return it, you can go and get some sleep. Tomorrow, you can make a list of what you’ll need to begin working on a pain-relieving serum, the morphine will not last.”

Erin took a deep breath, “I’m not able to guarantee absolute success and I don’t even know if I can repair your mask.” 

Bane replied silently by continuing to draw lazy circles down to the waistband of her cotton pants and slipped under the fabric. Erin suppressed a shiver at his light touch, he leaned closer aware of exactly how much distance remained between their bodies.

Bane’s lips hovered over her own and their collective respiratory rate increased as his fingertips reached the top of her panties.

“I can’t just stand by and let you destroy this city,” she whispered. 

Bane dipped his fingertips lower and brushed against the thin layer of fabric that covered her, never taking his eyes from hers. 

Erin looked up at him with bright eyes and a slow building blush as he slid his hand down the front of her panties and cupped a hand against her. Erin gasped at the sudden feel of his intimate touch. An involuntarily moan escaped her lips as Bane started to probe her delicate folds with his fingertips.

Bane watched conflicting thoughts wash across her face as he traced his fingertips along her wet folds, one fingertip came to rest against her clit and began to tease the nerve cluster. Her blush flared to life as she felt a rush of wetness under his touch, but she couldn’t seem to drop her gaze. He increased his gentle rhythm on her clit until he felt it start to harden under his caress.

Bane never stopped touching her as he shifted and insinuated himself between her thighs until he could rest more of his lower body against hers.

Erin felt her body betray her as her pelvis lifted into his touch, Bane dropped his head and buried his face against her neck. He could hear her breath increasing as she tried to keep from squeezing her thighs tightly around his waist. 

“Please, I can’t watch everyone in this city be annihilated. I took an oath to take care of people,” she managed before her control was completely shattered when he slipped a finger slowly into her wet opening. 

“If someone was suffering or in pain, would you help them?” Bane whispered against her neck. His lips brushed over the pulse that pounded in her slim throat.  


Erin was only capable of nodding at his question. “First do no harm,” she started in shaky words that trailed off into a low moan. He smiled as he felt her body tighten around his finger, “the people of Gotham are suffering doctor.”

She tried to shake her head at his words and not focus on the growing heaviness that had started in her lower belly and only bloomed further under his attention. 

“I’m in pain doctor, will you help me?” Bane asked as he raised his head from her neck and pressed his lips against hers. 

His words filled her head and the feel of his lips made her body arch into him. Neither were mindful of her cut mouth, soon the coppery taste of blood was in her mouth. 

“Yes,” she released on a low, long sigh.

“Yes, what?” Bane asked as he kissed along the line of her jaw, her blood dotted on his mouth. 

“I will help you,” she gasped before her body took complete control of the reins. Erin felt a deep twinge low in her belly when her orgasm caught her off guard and washed over her senses. 

Erin closed her eyes as her physical senses came to life, she felt his breath along her neck and the touch of his lips against her ear. 

Bane felt her thighs relax from their death grip around his hips and released his grip on her wrists. As soon as she was able to move her hands, she let them drop to the tops of his shoulders and scurry in the direction of his gown’s ties that she had fashioned into a droopy bow. Erin’s fingertips tugged at the fabric ties until the side of the gown fell from his body, she bit her lip as she hastily untied the other side.

Bane looked down at her as she bared his chest to her gaze, he watched as her eyes danced across his skin. He watched as her eyes found every scar and felt his breath tight in his chest when her fingertips lightly played across each ridge of scar tissue. 

Erin looked up at him, her face creased in worry when he gave a low hiss at the sharp and sudden pain her probing fingertips caused when she brushed across a line of skin that was warmer than it should have been. She leaned closer to the line of reddened skin that was not jagged or uneven like the others he wore. Erin’s frown deepened when she noted the surgical precision present.

“How did you get this?” she asked as she traced her fingers around the reddened, painful area. 

Bane looked down at where she was touching, he watched her fingertips move on his abdomen before he answered. 

“Perhaps, it was a parting gift from Mr. Wayne.”

Erin turned her attention from his skin to his eyes. “Bruce Wayne? The uber-rich Wayne?”

Bane wasn’t able to stop the small smile from coming to his lips, he neglected to remember that she hadn’t been outside in a while. “She doesn’t even know who I really am,” he thought as her eyes returned to his muscular torso.

“We have differing views,” he said, and it was clear he wasn’t going to elaborate.

“Take the rest of this off,” she said and then blushed when she heard herself speak. “So, I can look at this better,” she quickly stammered. Bane answered by sitting back from her, sliding away slowly as he traced his hands from his knees to the tips of her toes. Erin fought a shiver as he pulled the gown free of his body. 

“Now, where would you like me? Doctor,” Bane said in a tone that made her want to squeeze her thighs together.

“Where would you like to be?” Erin asked with a wink and stood.

“Where do you think?” Bane quickly replied and Erin felt her blush threaten to bloom again. She busied herself with straightening her pants and brushed her shirt back in place. 

“Over here’s good,” she said before turning towards the door. “I’m going to go get what I need,” Erin called over her shoulder as she walked down to the kitchen and brought the whole bag of stolen goods upstairs. 

After Bane watched her go, he settled where she had pointed. He leaned against the wall and felt his side where the pain was radiating. He closed his eyes as he thought of the last moments before he woke up on that metal cot. “If that masked bitch hadn’t shot me, I would have decimated the city of Gotham and eventually brought the world to its knees,” he thought as he heard Erin’s footsteps approaching. 

She set the plastic bag on the floor. He saw she had brought a few more candles and watched her light them with one of the scared boy’s left behind lighters. Erin began to arrange some items from the bag around her and leaned close to examine the line that adorned his skin. 

Bane watched as she moved her hand along the incision. “Tell me if this hurts too much,” she said as she palpated around the area. He found his eyes tracking her hand’s movements as she pressed against his skin. 

She didn’t need him to confirm his discomfort when his abdomen went rigid and he flinched under her touch. “Do you need a minute?” Erin asked and lessened the pressure of her hand. 

“Continue doctor.”

Bane watched as she probed the skin around the line of skin that was a deep shade of pink. “I‘m going to numb this up and aspirate it,” she said more to herself than him before she turned to a sterile needle and loaded it with a healthy dose of lidocaine and morphine. 

Bane let his eyes fall close as she slid the stainless steel into his taut skin, her eyes watched the drug leave the syringe and enter his body. She pressed a gauze square on the injection site and watched the pain drain away. A sad smile made its way to her lips as his shoulders slumped and he leaned his head back against the wall. His eyes closed as the tension receded under the delightful opiate waves. 

He let out a long breath and reveled in the potent narcotic that was bathing his senses as she used an alcohol-based gel to clean his torso. The drug flowed through his body, making every sound and sensation near the peak of their intensity. When Erin rubbed the alcohol-soaked gauze across his skin, it was like lightning kissing a path across his skin. 

He opened his eyes and looked at her when she laughed and shook her head. “Oh, sorry,” she said when she saw his eyes open. “I was just thinking how I don’t usually do the surgical prepping; I need a nurse.”

She turned away and loaded a different syringe with a topical anesthetic, “you might feel a sting,” she said as she injected a broad-spectrum antibiotic. Bane’s heightened acuity only registered the needle as the barest of intrusions.

Erin found her frown returning with a vengeance when she wasn’t able to draw anything into the syringe. She withdrew the steel and pressed her fingers into his flesh. This time she was able to probe harder since his conscious mind was still reeling from the strong dose she injected. She had added a bit more to the dose since it seemed one of her not favorite options was coming to fruition as she was able to feel a hard-oval shape under his skin. 

“I’m going to take this out,” Erin said in a factual tone and Bane found the fog clearing for a moment. His eyes searched her face for deception, Erin caught his eyes and held out both of her hands. “See, steady hands,” she said and smiled. 

Bane closed his eyes and nodded his consent; Erin opened a few sterile packages before scrubbed her hands with the strong-smelling alcohol gel. She ran another gauze pad across his skin and held his skin taut as she drew the scalpel across his skin. The wickedly sharp metal edge parted the flesh under its kiss. 

Erin felt a nostalgic tidal wave of memories as she sponged away blood that was clouding her field of vision, a smile tugged at the corners of her lips as she worked on his body.  


While Erin silently worked her fingers and the edge of the blade against his flesh, Bane felt just the faintest pressure from where she touched him. 

While Erin continued to prod his flesh and mop away excess blood, on a different continent Selina Kyle traipsed through Milan with Bruce Wayne. As they were strolling through a cobblestone courtyard, Selina had a sudden uneasiness settle in the pit of her stomach. She paused on her stilt-like stilettos and Bruce turned to look at her, concern present on his face. 

“Bane is dead. Right?”

Bruce’s expression softened as he cupped a hand to her jaw. “Bane is dead, he now only exists in the past.”

He dropped his lips to the top of her hand and then led her into a lavish jewelry store. As Selina’s eyes were tempted by brilliant diamonds and brushed gold pendants, her mind still didn’t want to let go of the thought of Bane still being alive. As Bruce fastened a stunning bracelet around Selina’s wrist, back in Gotham, Erin smiled at the acquisition of her impromptu surgery. 

“I think it’s a goddamn tracking device,” Erin said as she extracted a gun-metal grey oval object from his side. Erin passed him the bloody plastic and then pressed a sterile pad of gauze against his side.

Bane turned the small object over in his palm, he had an image of Bruce Wayne and his expensive toys. The reliance upon illusion and high-tech trickery. 

Erin watched as he closed his hand around the plastic device and crushed it against his palm. Bane opened his hand and let the pieces rain on the filthy remaining carpet. 

“Hold this,” she said pointing to the gauze after he had destroyed the device. 

Bane dropped his hand to the gauze she was holding and covered her hand with his own. She looked up and met his eyes as his large hand engulfed hers and she felt the brutal and raw strength that he was capable of rendering. 

Erin cleared her throat when the heat of his hand made her mind start to wander, she pulled her hand free and pulled a few packets of nylon suture to close the incision she had made. 

She pulled the gauze from his hand and wiped at the slice in his skin. “Even stitches now doctor,” Bane said in a teasing tone as she lowered the needle to the edge of his skin. 

“Oh, you could ask anyone at General and they will tell you I have the most uniform and consistent wound closure,” she said glancing up at him before sliding the needle into his skin. 

“How did you attain that status?” Bane asked as she began to close his wound. 

“When I was able to get the time, I’d go hang out in the basement and watch the autopsies. I dated one of the pathologists for a while and after he was done, I‘d help him stitch the body back together,” she said and flicked her eyes to his face briefly. “Are you experiencing any pain in your side?” she added. 

Bane shook his head and watched her pass the needle through his skin and create a neat little row of even stitches. He closed his eyes as she finished closing the incision and cleaned it with a fresh gauze soaked in saline. He heard the sound of paper tape ripping from a roll and the faint pressure when she affixed a thick bandage to his side. 

Bane opened his eyes as Erin said, “all done,” and cupped a hand to the side of his face and leaned forward and on a moment born of pure undiluted spontaneity pressed her lips against his. Lust pushed aside the narcotic’s powerful grip for a moment and Bane pulled her hard against his body. She tried to stay mindful of his side, but it proved to be difficult as his hands seemed to be everywhere at once.

Bane’s senses were flamed to life upon the light pressure of her lips, his ears were filled with her low, soft moans when his hands slipped under her shirt. His nose was filled with the delicate scent of citrus that had lingered on her skin. 

Bane’s hands moved up and down her back, his rough fingertips smoothed over her silky skin. He slid his hand up the back of her neck and twined his fingers in her hair, a gasp fell from her lips when he tightened his grip around her fall of hair. 

“Thank you for your fine work doctor, but you still will need to tell me where you misplaced my property,” he said and tried to not get distracted by the gentle touch of her hair.  


“I told you I don’t rightly recall,” Erin managed even though her breath was coming faster. 

She fixed a coy smile on her face and kissed him with a growing sense of urgency. Bane growled into her mouth when she bit down in brutal fashion on his lower lip. He soon found himself tasting metallic and coppery notes beyond the taste of her lips. 

Bane pulled away from her with visible genuine surprise in his eyes for just a moment before his lips pulled into a dangerous smile. 

“This situation will continue to stay pleasant for both of us, provided you tell me the location of my property,” Bane said in a melodic low tone. 

Erin’s lips pulled into a full and lazy smile, “I’m sure it will,” she hissed. “I’m sure you’ll show me just how much stronger you are than me, demonstrate fully that very obvious fact.”

Her eyes were strangely bright in the soft spill of the candlelight as she looked at him, “will you beat me and kill me, or just beat me? Or kill?” she asked with a tilt of her head and an arched eyebrow. 

Erin continued without giving him a chance to reply. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know how this game plays out,” she said with a resigned shrug. 

Bane’s eyes had never left hers; he had hoped she would drop her guard and glance at the hiding spot. She never looked away from him as she slipped her hand into the plastic bag of stolen goodies. Bane released her hair and allowed her to stand, he noted the death grip she had on the battered pack of menthol cigarettes. 

“Where are you going doctor?” Bane asked as she glanced at the doorway. 

“I’m going to go sit by that window and smoke,” she said as she crossed the room. Erin sat down on the floor and lit the end of one of the retreating kid’s fear forgotten cigarettes. 

Bane chuckled as she stifled a cough and exhale on a ragged breath. Erin looked across the room at him, “I know,” she started with a shrug. “Smoking doctors, we’re a dying breed,” she said with a shallow inhale before adding with a sad smile. “My dad died when I was ten, I was lost when he left this world. He always accepted me and encouraged me to follow the path I chose or just blaze my own trail if I lost the trail of breadcrumbs.”

Bane leaned back against the wall and let some of the tension in his body dissipate back under the narcotic umbrella. He watched and listened as she shook her head and trailed off into unintelligible mumbling.

“Please continue doctor,” his voice called her back to reality.

“Only if you call me Erin.”

“Please continue. Erin.” This time Bane’s voice carried a teasing lilt.

Erin took a deep inhale and kept the smoke locked in her lungs for a few moments. “When he died, I was stranded, I don’t even know how I made it. After high school, I applied and attended the furthest college from home.” She paused and closed her eyes with her next exhale, “the air around him always smelled like this.”

Bane was glad the window was boarded up, there was little draft, and the reaching fingers of the smoke didn’t reach him. He watched as she laughed and shook her head, “I moved here because the job at General had one of the best benefit packages and really good pay.”

Erin fell silent and for the next couple of minutes, the only sound was her steady inhalations.

“Neither.” Bane’s voice shattered the silence.

He continued speaking when her expression turned quizzical. “I will neither beat you nor kill you.” 

“Well that’s good to hear,” Erin said as she raised an invisible glass to toast him. 

“But you’ll need to disclose the location of the chip you have hidden.”

Erin sighed, “what is your end plan?”

“I will keep my word and not harm you.”

“That’s not what I asked,” she said with a smirk. “What exactly is on the card and how will you be using it?”

“H.O.P.E.,” Bane said after a brief delay.

“Hope?” she repeated and didn’t have to wait long for him to elaborate. 

“Hydroxiginphencyclidethyl,” he said and had to smile as her mind worked through the chemical name. 

“Hope can sustain life longer than your medicine,” he said and thought back to the patch of brilliant blue sky that teased the slowly dying inhabitants of Pena Dura. “Hope comes in all forms,” Bane added. His eyes were filled with a scorching intensity, iron strength and resolve when they met hers, “you for example.”

“Me?” Erin scoffed. “Hardly,” she said shaking her head. 

“You represented hope as I laid on that cot, you were the hope to be free of that underground cage.”

She shifted the direction of the conversation as she felt a well of embarrassment well up in her belly. “So, what does this H.O.P.E. do? Is it an explosive or an inhalant?”

“It’s a colorless gas that some have described as carrying the aroma of curdled milk.”

“What’s the mortality rate after exposure?” Erin asked almost nervous to hear his answer. 

“It leaves no life to measure,” he stated in a casual tone. 

“And the formula is on the chip?”

Bane merely nodded and she took a slow inhale feeling the cool menthol smoke fill her throat and bathe her lungs with the cloud of premature death. 

“So, what, you’ll just gas the whole city of Gotham?”

Again, Bane nodded, and she felt her agitation grow. “How will you release it and then what? Another city?”

“It will reach all the inhabitants of Gotham with ease. No citizen or vagrant shall escape, no wall or other obstacle shall bar its path,” Bane said in an unreadable tone before adding. 

“Gotham’s end is eventual.”

As he spoke, Erin let her eyes drag down his heavily muscled neck and broad shoulders. She let her eyes dance across the taut and golden skin of his chest, the scars quite literally a topographical map of him being born into the afterbirth of despair, stranded on a veritable ocean of blood. 

Erin slid her eyes to the left and down the length of his powerful and well-developed biceps and forearms. Her eyes journeyed to his hands, over his scarred knuckles and rough fingertips. She felt her lower body clench as she had near body-jarring memories of his exhilarating touch. 

“Have you had your fill?” Bane’s voice brought color to her cheeks and her eyes back to meet his. His tone was teasing as she gave a slow exhale. 

“Not quite yet,” she said with a half-smile. “We should probably leave,” she said on the next breath.

Her abrupt jump in the topic of conversation was unexpected but she quickly continued, sounding almost hyper. “That tracking device could lead someone to us, it can’t possibly be safe for us to stay here,” she said trailing off into silence.

Bane moved his gaze from Erin to the floor where the broken plastic pieces of the device decorated the floor like monochromatic confetti. 

Erin looked up when Bane stood, she watched as he stretched his arms overhead and turned his head from side to side. His joints popped and cracked like an orthopedic lullaby, “what’re you doing?” she asked with a sudden spike in curiosity. 

“You may be right about it leading them right to us,” he said and started to walk towards her. Bane kept both his hands raised and visible as he closed the distance between them and paused when he saw tension fill her body. Erin rose to her feet and he got the impression that with every centimeter he advanced, she grew more and more ready to spring. 

“We’ll head to the East End, where there are very few identities and an army waiting to be organized,” he said and watched her demeanor remain unchanged. Erin looked at him trying to glean his intentions, frantically searching his eyes for deception. “What about your plans for Gotham?”

“I will wait for you downstairs. Please retrieve the chip, we will not speak of it until later,” he said and extended his hand towards her. “I will not harm you.”

Erin dropped her smoldering cigarette butt on the floor and snuffed out its life under the ball of her foot before reaching out and letting her hand rest in his. Her hand fit into his palm as though it was made with him in mind, her slim fingertips and blunt cut nails were engulfed by his massive hand. His warm and rough skin teased goose bumps to the surface of her skin. 

“I’ll be down in five,” she said and withdrew her hand from his warm grip. Bane nodded and left the room as she heard his heavy steps as he descended the stairs. Erin’s eyes drank in the sight of his heavily scarred back until he was out of view, she crossed the room to where she had left the supplies strewn about haphazardly. She stuffed everything back in the bag before moving back to the boarded-up window, she ran her finger in the dirty track of where there used to be a screen and pulled the tiny chip from its dusty tomb. 

Erin looked at the chip in her palm before dropping it into the beat-up pack of generic cigarettes, where it settled to the bottom. “You really are bat shit crazy,” she thought shaking her head and letting her lips curl into a lop-sided grin.

True to his word, Bane was waiting by the worn dining room table. His back was still to her as she stepped onto the scuffed and weathered linoleum, she cleared her throat. “I think this might fit you,” Erin said, and he turned to look at her. She was holding up a long-sleeved thermal top with just a few small holes and loose threads. Erin tried to not openly stare as he pulled the shirt over his head. She watched the fabric stretch taut across his broad chest and become a second skin.

“Ready to go?” she asked and shifted the bag to her other hand. Bane looked her over, she had found a ripped grey cardigan that she had pulled on over her tank top and a pair of yellow plastic flip-flops. He couldn’t help but wonder where she had concealed the chip, he was betting it was somewhere on her person or hidden in her clothes. 

He closed his eyes for a minute as he imagined crossing the room and forcing her to tell him where she hid the computer chip. His mind took the intensity of this thought and painted a vivid picture of her underneath him, his hands on her body. Bane took a shaky breath and felt a twinge in his cock at the thought of spreading her naked thighs to his gaze and touch. He wondered if she would quiver under his touch and open her body to him. 

Erin frowned as Bane’s eyes seemed to see inside of her. At that moment, under his gaze she felt an uneven mixture of curiosity, delicious anticipation and good ole’ fashioned fear. She cleared her throat for what seemed like a record number, “I’d like to drive,” she stated and held out her hand for the keys. Bane regarded her a moment more and passed her the key ring that he held in his palm. Erin turned and walked to the car, she looked up from loading the trunk when he appeared by the car. “How’s the pain, do you need anything before we head out?” 

Bane felt a momentary loss in the ability to form a coherent sentence when he saw the genuine concern in her inquiry. Her eyes searched his face or evidence of pain, any presence of discomfort. She sought the slightest of grimaces, subtle winces, rapid or shallow breathing. Erin’s eyes swept across his exposed skin, looking for a pallid or reddened complexion. 

He felt a foreign feeling settle around him and wrap itself around his senses. “I am more than adequate but thank you. Erin.”

The way he said thank you made her breath catch in her chest, the two amazingly simple syllables had the appeal of a god as they rolled off his tongue and through his lips. Her conscious mind assaulted her senses with frame by frame images of him relieving her of her clothes before pulling her flush against his naked body. The sound of him speaking those two words caused a rush of wetness between her thighs and she inhaled audibly. A short, sharp, and quick but deliberate air exchange that drew his full attention. 

Bane directed his gaze to her face; her eyes were wide and unblinking but bright. Her face had drained somewhat of color but left her cheeks with a high rosy glow, her lips were slightly parted. As he watched she ran her tongue over her chapped lips, his mind returned to her lying under him. The sound of Erin’s breath made him want to push her against the car and order her to squeeze her thighs tight around his hips, his cock twinged in agreement of sliding through her slick folds and into her wet center.

“Anything on your mind?” Bane asked her in a tone that promised to fulfill whatever she was afraid to ask as she slammed the trunk lid. Bane settled back on the passenger seat as Erin adjusted the dashboard light and made sure there was enough gas to make the trip to the dangerous East End.

Before she maneuvered the car out of the gravel driveway, she pushed the search button on the radio.

“Do you mind?” she asked him as she tuned into local news station. “I’ve missed a lot, I’d like to start catching up,” she added. 

“I have no objections,” he said as she pulled a cigarette free from the pack. “You object to this?” she asked as she rolled down the window. When he shook his head, she pushed on the car’s lighter and waited till the coils grew a bright reddish orange.

As Erin drove the car through the city, the sky began to brighten as the sun relieved the moon of its night shift. While the radio recounted the latest national sports teams wins and losses, Dr. Matheus Cruz was stirred from sleep by his early morning alarm. He struggled to not hit snooze and climbed out of the bed he shared with his wife of thirty years. Angelique was always able to sleep through his alarm, he walked across the chilly tile of his kitchen and started the coffee pot. While it percolated, he went to the front porch to retrieve the plastic bagged newspaper. 

Matheus’s morning routine was simple and always the same, he drank several cups of black coffee and ate two slices of plain toast as he read the paper. He then rinsed out his coffee cup and left it to dry in the dish rack before returning to his bedroom and quietly entering and closing the door of the bathroom that adjoined their bedroom. He would brush his teeth, shower, and shave if necessary, before dressing in his nondescript wardrobe. 

Matheus kissed his still sleeping wife goodbye and left his modest home in his high-end luxury car to the lab where he tested the boundaries of human limitations and shattered pain thresholds. He knew immediately something was amiss as soon as he drove into the parking area of the camouflaged lab.

Erik’s car was still parked in his usual spot, but the night tech Jerry’s sedan was missing. Matheus slammed his car in park and jogged into the lab. The change in his pockets jingled with each step as he raced up the steps of the lab and he stopped when he saw the aftermath of Erin’s pillaging. 

“Goddammit,” he shouted and ran towards the cells where Erin and Bane were secured. Matheus felt dread fill his chest when he came across Jerry’s body. He didn’t need to guess the cause of death; the unusual angle of the corpse’s neck spoke loud and clear. Matheus ran faster to the line of clear cells and knew Erik had died a painful death when he saw the  
large pool of blood that surrounded his body, the edges were dark and sticky to the touch. 

“That little bitch,” Matheus whispered and shook his head as he looked down at Erik’s pale and flaccid form. He returned to the lab at a brisk pace and pulled a rolling chair to one of the computer monitors, he wondered as he typed his way through several secure login pages if Bane was already dead from the noxious poison cocktail he had slipped into his mask. 

Matheus’s fingers flew over the keyboard and a large map appeared on the flat screen monitor of the city of Gotham. He slammed his fist on the table when the tracking device appeared to go offline at a location on the outskirts of town. He typed a few more commands into the computer and was met with similar messages about a “lost connection to device.” 

Matheus scribbled the address on a scrap of paper and crossed the lab and unlocked a low stainless-steel cabinet. The bottom drawer opened to reveal a titanium snub nose .44 magnum handgun, the fire power was massive from the smooth barrel and could damn near bisect a human body or obliterate an abdominal cavity. Matheus returned to his car with the gun and barely legible address. He pressed the accelerator to the floor and urged the high-performance engine to earn its keep as he followed the same route to Erin’s now ramshackle home. 

While Matheus flew at break-neck speed through the streets of Gotham, across the globe Selina Kyle awoke from the icy cold clutches of a furious nightmare. A scream was torn from her lips as her eyes flew open, Bruce quickly swam to wakefulness as his eyes scanned the room for trouble. 

Selina began babbling about a dream she had where Bane hadn’t died but was gathering his strength. She described his fearsome nature being nurtured in a dark sleep as his physical body recovered, her dream had shown her a Gotham City filled with the dead. Street corners were filled with large piles of rotting, maggot infested corpses. Men, women, children, the young and old alike were in messy stacks, the limbs of the rich undulated intimately with those of the poor. Their bodies spewing rotting entrails all in a green bile soup.

Selina shuddered and Bruce just held her as she recounted the beggars and hangars on being razed to the ground as well as the highfalutin and wealthy. 

“Bane is dead,” Bruce whispered against her temple. “I’ll make some calls,” he said and felt a small measure of relief when she nodded. 

As Dr. Matheus Cruz merged onto the highway, he dialed the number of a man who had more assets than a god. He tapped a button and waited until the call was answered on the fourth ring.

“Gables,” a solemn voice stated.

“It’s Cruz, we have a situation with the combustible cargo.”

There was a slight pause on the other end of the phone, “what sort of situation?”

“It has gone missing,” Matheus said and cleared his throat before adding. “Both shipments.”

“How is your progress in tracking down the missing cargo, have you checked the local docks?”

“I have a hit on one of the tracking numbers, I’m headed there now.”

“Report back in fifteen minutes,” the voice said before the line clicked dead. 

As Matheus continued driving down the four-lane highway, Erin and Bane were close to arriving in the East End. Erin checked to make sure her car door was locked as she navigated the streets and alleys of the den of debauchery. The East End was a place where you could buy illicit powders to snort up your nose and be teased by visions of purple ponies prancing through fields of green clovers. One could find glass vials and pre-filled hypodermic needles holding liquids to represent virtually every color of the rainbow and a few in between.

Frequent flyers to the East End knew that the bright pink syringes could break one’s mind and shatter the notions of reality, the sky-blue needles were hard to come by, but worth committing patricide for one sweet taste. The jade green vial contents made life tolerable and kept the suicide rate for the East End under 50%. 

“Are you still feeling okay?” Erin asked as her headlights illuminated the door of a hotel that had hourly to weekly room rates and cable television. Bane took a moment to check in with his body, there was the beginning faint fingers of pain radiating from his side where the topical anesthetic had begun to wear off. 

“I could give you some Oxycodone,” she added in the space before he answered. “It works well as secondary opiate in a marriage to morphine.”

Erin looked over when Bane nodded, she parked the car in the cramped space between two overflowing dumpsters. She pulled the trunk latch and looked in her mirrors for any lurkers, Bane opened his door and accompanied her to the rear of the car where she rummaged through the bag for a needle and plastic vial of the narcotic. 

Erin pushed the drug into his body, and he felt the pleasant effects immediately as the Oxy danced with the morphine already on board. She locked the car doors and pocketed the keys as they made their way to the hotel’s poorly lit entrance.

Leaning against a streetlamp was a young hooker with impossibly long legs encased in ripped up fishnet stockings. The girl had on red high heels with scuffed heels, her upper body was barely covered with a lacy camisole that left her pierced navel exposed. She lifted up her skirt and revealed more of her sallow thighs as Erin and Bane approached. 

“Hey,” she drawled. “You lookin’ for some fun baby?”

“No,” Erin said and walked past the young whore. Bane followed her into the glass fronted doors of the hotel. The smell of the lobby had her wrinkling her nose, a combination of piss and old vomit was not quite completely covered up by an apple-cinnamon air freshener. 

The scruffy man at the check-in desk was missing most of her teeth and had a shiny bald spot at the crown of his head. “I’d like a room,” Erin stated, and the man looked up from lighting his phallic cigar, “how long you want it?”

“A week,” she said without checking with Bane first. She reasoned a week would be more than enough time for him to get back on his feet and for her to locate a supply of narcotics. Erin thought she might know an old colleague or two who might be able to help with the delivery system of his mask. 

“Whoa, big spenders,” the inn keep guffawed and gave Erin her change and a room key. As they made their way to room #328 on the third floor, across the globe in Milan, Bruce and Selina sat across from each other at a small wrought iron table and sipped on tiny servings of rich espresso and breakfast pastries. She listened with rapt attention as Bruce recounted the information, he had gleaned from several international phone calls after Selina had fallen back into a thankfully dreamless sleep. 

Bruce’s inquiries had yielded news that Gotham City was continuing to recover and flourish. The city gained even more momentum when the new Mayor Caroline Tobinsky announced that the city would be fully resurrected by New Year’s Eve. She was so confident that she promised chart topping musical performances and had an enthusiastic call for the citizens of Gotham to come together. It was a little less than six months until New Year’s, but the celebratory anticipation was already contagious and unifying.

As Selina tried to let Bruce’s words be a comfort, back in Gotham, Matheus arrived at Erin’s old home. His car screeched to a halt, spitting up gravel under the radial tires. He had his gun in hand as he approached the front door that Bane and Erin had exited not too terribly in the past. 

Matheus went from room to room with his gun arm extended, after he found the downstairs empty, he slowly ascended the stairs. In the room at the end of the hall that used to serve as Erin’s bedroom, he found the mutilated remains of the GPS device. Matheus scanned the room and found the multiple splashes of dried blood on the floor and the discarded plastic wrappers and blood-soaked gauze squares.

The remaining scent of cigarette smoke still hung in the air; his mind worked rapidly to solve the visual Rubik’s Cube. 

After Matheus checked the adjoining bathroom, he walked back to the car to make his ordered return phone call. As he pushed the redial button, Erin and Bane walked down the hotel’s softly lit hallway with its carpet a shade of Valentine’s Day red. The key turned easy enough in the lock and the door swung open to a dingy room with a faded dark blue comforter adorned with English white lilies. An older looking television was latched to a chipped dresser and Erin also soon discovered that the bathroom door creaked on its hinges and didn’t completely shut.

Any unhappiness with the room that Erin may have felt, evaporated instantly when she cranked the faucet of the bathtub and after a few moments felt the hot water wash over her wrist. She twisted the faucets until the water was near scalding and pushed the stopper in the bottom of the cracked porcelain tub. Erin’s eyes found a small basket on the sink with a miniature bottle of shampoo and conditioner and a vanilla brown sugar bubble bath. She uncapped the liquid soap and dumped half the contents under the rushing water.  


Erin sat on the edge of the tub as it filled with fragrant opalescent bubbles and the promise of delicious warmth. Her mind wandered and she didn’t hear Bane walk into the bathroom over the sound of the water and her roaming concentration. 

“I see you’re wasting no time.”

His voice shook her from her fog, and she turned to look over her shoulder at him before rising to her feet. “I haven’t had a hot bath in a long time.”

“Now shoo,” she said waving him out of the room. Bane allowed her to banish him and close the door as best as she could. After she had secured the door, she glanced at the nearly full tub of water and turned off the faucets. Erin strained her ears and listened as the bed springs squealed in protest when he settled his weight on the edge of the mattress.  


She pulled the pack of cigarettes from the cardigan’s side pocket and dumped the valuable chip into the palm of her hand. Erin gingerly wrapped the plastic in a square of toilet tissue and tucked it in the infrastructure of the old pipes under the sink. 

As Bane sat on the end of the queen-sized bed, he could hear the sound of her splashing in the worn but still functional tub. His drawstring pants started to feel too tight across his groin as he thought of the fragrant soap bubbles landing on her wet and naked flesh, popping and dying upon contact with her slick skin.

Bane closed his eyes and listened to the water splash with her every movement, he stood up and walked to the mostly closed door. He ducked down and was able to glimpse her through a narrow crack in the doorjamb. From his vantage point, he could clearly see her slumped down in the near-scalding water. Moist steam began to collect and hang heavily and thick in the air. Bane watched as Erin dunked a washcloth in the water and wrung it out before laying it across her eyes. She leaned back against the back of the tub and his gaze moved ravenously over the exposed and reddened skin of her upper chest and shoulders. 

Bane’s cock began to ache as he watched water roll down and collect along her prominent collarbones. He cleared his throat and spoke in a low tone. “Are you enjoying your soak?” he called through the door.

An amused expression filled Bane’s face when he watched Erin pull the washcloth from her face and look towards the closed door. From the tub, she wasn’t able to see him from where he watched her. 

“This is even better than I imagined,” she sighed as she let her shoulders slump and relaxed back into the hot water with its cloyingly sweet steam. 

“When you’re done, I think I might go for a soak,” Bane called and watched a flurry of emotions flow across her face. 

“If you don’t feel like waiting, you can join me if you‘d like,” Erin practically whispered. If Bane hadn’t been looking at her face, he would have missed the beautiful flash of vulnerability that appeared on her features.


	5. Oh, Yes. That.

Erin pressed her lips together in a thin line and winced as she compressed the cut on her upper lip as Bane pushed the door open and walked into the steam-filled bathroom. He looked at her as she soaked in the water and all he heard was the painful honesty in her words.

All he could see were her eyes that were filled with unashamed arousal and he longed to press his lips against hers. His body ached for her taste on his tongue and his mind was overwhelmed by the desire to run his hands over her body and inhale the aroma of her creamy skin that was bathed in the syrupy sweet scent of warm vanilla.

Erin regarded him with her breath coming in slow waves as he leisurely pulled his shirt over his head and let it fall silently to the tile floor that was adorned with spider web resembling cracks. She was certain she forgot to breathe when his hands dropped to the drawstring ties of his cotton pants and tugged the loopy bow apart. 

He slid the loose pants down his thighs as he walked towards the tub and her eyes widened perceptibly with his approach. Erin let her gaze run across his naked body with a growing fervor, “wait just one minute,” she said and raised a hand from the water. 

Bane paused as fat drops of water ran down her slim fingers, “I’d like to look at you a minute.” If the room hadn’t been so full of steam and her skin wasn’t already flushed, her face would have been surely filled with a brilliant blush. “If that’s okay,” she added with a rush.

The intensity of Bane’s gaze made a molten ball of heat spread throughout her lower body. Erin dragged her gaze down his body, thick scars like an external vascular system wrapped around his muscular thighs. Between his legs his cock hung heavily, the weight and intensity of her gaze made blood collect and fill his flesh. 

Erin squeezed most of the moisture out of the washcloth and added more of the bath gel onto the fabric, she agitated the cloth until a thick and lustrous lather spilled forth. “Come here,” she said and watched as he stepped into the water and settled at the opposite end of the tub from her. 

Erin bit her lower lip and moved through the water towards him, she tentatively reached out the hand clutching the soapy wash rag and swept it across the skin of his upper chest and shoulders. Bane sat still and let Erin explore his body, he watched as she dropped the cloth in the bathwater and ran her bare hands over the hard muscles of his chest and abdomen.

Bane’s head dropped to the soft curve of her neck, she felt each of his exhales hot against her skin. His fingertips served as individual points of pressure as he tightened his grip on her hips.

Erin’s hands continued to dip down and trace the indentations and borders of his conditioned body, she suppressed a shiver as her fingers danced across his wet skin.

“What’s going on in that head of yours?” Bane asked in a melodic tone as her gaze settled on a point past his shoulder. 

“I can’t quantify this,” she said with an edge of irritation to her voice. “This?” he asked after a lengthy pause, concern leeching into his peripheral. 

“I can’t comprehend the way I’m feeling, can’t diagnose it.” 

He stared up at her and didn’t have to wait long for her to elaborate.

“I mean, I can interpret blood panels and their values. I can read an EKG or a CT scan and give you a good idea of what’s happening inside your body, I can’t,” she trailed off and stared down at her hands that rested on his naked chest. Erin blew out a sharp breath before adding, “I can’t assign a definition to these feelings I’m having.”

Bane’s eyes searched her face and tried to read her non-verbal visible emotions. His eyes moved across her bare skin, settling briefly on her bruised lip and down the slick naked skin of her arms where they zeroed in on the bracelet of a bruise he had made around her slim wrist. 

Erin followed his gaze and she tried to plunge her hand into the hot bath water with its thick layer of foamy, opalescent bubbles. He caught her wrist before she could submerge it, “I regret this,” he whispered. His words were spoken on an exhale above the burst capillaries under her skin, staining the surface a myriad of crayon colors. 

Erin smiled and lowered her face to kiss the hollowed area at the base of his neck. He closed his eyes at the feel of her lips pressed against his warm skin. Her whispering soon found his ear.

“Our time together has made me realize how lonely I’ve been, even being locked up in that plastic cage. I don’t want to be alone anymore,” Erin managed before embarrassment made her voice fail. 

He tightened his arms around her waist and pulled her as close as humanly possible. She felt her breath leave her lungs as he crushed her to his chest. 

“I share those same feelings,” he murmured against the bare skin over her ribs. A frustrated growl slipped through the front of his mask which kept him from having intimate contact. 

She bit back a painful cry when he gripped her hips too enthusiastically, desperate to impress the genuine meaning behind his words. 

Bane’s mind and body were fighting inside the front of his conscious mind, he lost his grip on any further control and readjusted his grip around her waist. Erin let out an involuntary yelp as he scooped her up in his strong arms and lifted her from the water as he stood. Her cry quickly dissipated when he carried her wet, naked body into their booked room and deposited her on the linen covered bed. 

Erin soon found herself looking up at him as he brushed her damp hair back from her forehead. Bane held her eyes as he took three large, analgesic lungful’s before removing his titanium coiled mask. She closed her eyes as he trailed his fingertips from collarbone to collarbone before dropping his head and lightly nipping the side of her neck. 

Bane pressed a soft kiss on her forehead as he let his hand trail across the smooth expanse of her belly, Erin’s breath grew erratic as he cupped her bare breast. Bane felt her nipple harden under his palm as he gently squeezed the flesh. He placed a warm hand on each of her knees and urged her to spread her thighs open to his gaze and touch. He lowered his face and pressed his mouth against the smooth space between the top of her thigh and intimate center. 

Erin felt her knees start to tremble when his lips landed on her inner thigh. As he kissed a path along her warm skin, he murmured against her shaking flesh.  
“Human love, human trust, are always perilous because they break down. The greater the love, the greater the trust, and the greater the peril, the greater the disaster,” Bane whispered as he began to hesitantly rub slow lazy circles over her clit that started to rapidly swell under his light touch. 

Erin tipped her head back and gasped as he slid his finger slowly inside her, he gazed upon her, his voice heavy with need, reveling in the knowledge that she was moaning and undulating only for him.

“Because to place absolute trust on another human being is a disaster, both ways, since each human being is a ship that must sail its own course, even if it goes in company with another ship.” He purred as his roughened palms massaged the soft skin of her hips and thighs, while his tongue moved on her intimate center with languorous strokes and coaxed her closer to tumbling into the precipice of ecstasy. 

“And yet, love, is the greatest thing between human beings.”

Erin gasped as her body took complete control of the reins. She arched her back as she felt a deep twinge low in her belly before her orgasm caught her off guard and washed over her senses. She closed her eyes tightly as she succumbed to paralyzing bliss. 

“This is nice,” she whispered in a contented sigh as Bane slid up the length of her body. He massaged the supple naked skin of her lower back as she pressed her lips against his, tasting herself on their kiss. 

“Why did you say yes without a struggle?”

She opened her eyes as he moved his head back so he could see her face. “I can assure you that it was not without a struggle,” she said with a smirk before adding. “But I can’t ignore the obvious.”

Bane considered her words as he let a hand release its grip on the taut flesh of her hip and slide up to cup her breast. Erin let her eyes close at the gentle touch of his rough-skinned hands. A whisper of a laugh escaped through her lips, closely followed by an expression of painful conflict that washed across her face.

Bane paused a moment as he looked down at her face, his hand at her breast which had been lightly moving over the supple flesh, froze. He felt the warm tissue of her nipple harden under his palm as he felt a rush of foreign feelings slash at his emotions. He had a flash of fragmented thoughts that didn’t involve the spilling of another’s blood or their loss of life and limb.

“What is the obvious?” he asked as he traced his fingers along her tense features. 

“Well to say the very least. I don’t think I’d fare well in a fight with you,” she said with a laugh before adding. “I’ll do anything to defend myself but,” she said and trailed off into silence. 

“But what my dear?” he asked as he smoothed his thumb across her lips. 

“You’re a strong man and I know all too well what a strong man is capable of doing,” she said as she held his gaze.

“What do you believe I’m capable of doing?” Bane asked with a real curiosity as to her answer. 

“You can hurt, shatter and kill me.” Unblinking she continued, the stranglehold of melancholy hung on her words like a chronic and debilitating disease. “I’ve been wrecked and destroyed, I’m like a walking, talking, breathing house of cards.”

Erin shook her head and let a smirk twist her lips, “but I do know my way around the human body and a chemistry lab. I know how to create something that can boil and twist the contents of anyone’s visceral cavity into a neat little goddamn bow,” she added in a wry tone.

“Do you believe I will hurt you?” Bane asked as he struggled to not outwardly show his approval at her statement. The flash of anger and defiance that had flooded across her face and filled her eyes was titillating. She nearly breathed an audible sigh of relief when he finally released his hold on her other hip, she didn’t have to glance down to know she already had a forming crescent moon shape of bruises. 

Erin’s stifled sigh dissolved into a soft moan when his hand slid to the base of her spine, his strong fingers kneaded the muscles under her skin. 

Bane listened to the light and frequent hitches in her breathing, he let his lips hover over hers. “Do you believe I will hurt you?”

“My answer isn’t relevant,” she managed to say when he slid both hands down her body to rest behind her thighs. His eyes softened, “why would you begin to think that?”

“Because you’re deliberate, I have zero doubt that you already have a plan. My answer isn‘t part of that.”

“Why have you decided I’m deliberate?” Bane asked.

“You’re disciplined,” she started and raised her hands up to his chest. Erin trailed her slim fingers across the firm flesh. “Your survival and determination is etched on your body,” she said as he squeezed his large hands on the back of her thighs. “Your eyes are often filled with darkness,” Erin whispered. 

Bane remained silent as she left one hand resting above his heart while the other made a slow path up his neck, she traced the outline of his eyes with her fingertips. “You are able to cause men to nearly be frightened to death,” she said with somewhat wonder as she thought of the sleazy man in the hotel’s lobby. 

“Do I frighten you?” Bane asked. Her fingertips paused briefly on his face before tracing the line of his jaw and the scar across his chin. 

“I don’t fear you, but I fear your strength,” Erin murmured as brushed her thumb across his upper lip. Under her palm she could feel his steady heartbeat. 

As Bane let her words marinate in his conscious mind, across the city, Matheus Cruz returned to the camouflaged laboratory and prison. His initial phone call had started a ripple effect in the small and classified pool. As he walked back into the lab’s central hub, he made a beeline to a squat filing cabinet that had not registered on Erin’s radar. 

Matheus pulled a round silver key from his pocket and unlocked the bottom drawer of the steel grey cabinet. Inside was a stack of olive-green folders, the top of each was labeled “Project Europa.”

He let out a deep sigh and some measure of relief washed over him as he removed the entire stack of folders. Matheus’s smart phone rang twice before he was able to answer.  


He glanced at the benign name that he assigned the incoming number, “Bob.”

“I have all the shipping manifests,” Matheus said upon answering.

The line was silent for a couple heartbeats, Matheus held his breath. “Good,” came the voice before adding after another agonizing pause. “Now, find the missing cargo.”

Matheus was soon listening to dead air as the call was ended, he exhaled a shaky breath and pulled a rolling chair to one of the computer terminals. He pulled up a map of Gotham City and squinted at the screen. “Where are you hiding?” he whispered to the bright screen of the monitor as his eyes moved across the satellite map. 

As Matheus zoomed in and out of various sections of the map, back in the seedy hotel in the East End, Bane traced his hands around to the inside of her thighs. Erin failed to suppress a shiver at the stark contrast of his rough hands against her pale skin. “I will never raise a hand to strike you or deliberately hurt you,” he said and shifted his lower body to brush against hers. 

Erin looked down and a slow warmth began to spread throughout her body. She felt a rush of wetness when her eyes found his stiffening cock. She looked back up and met his eyes as she opened her thighs to allow him to press flush against her body. 

Erin’s breathing quickened as he trailed a hand across her smooth belly and dip to the apex at the top of her thighs. Bane’s cock grew hard until it ached against the inside of her thigh as he ran a fingertip across her slick folds and the cluster of nerves that hardened under his touch and forced a low cry from her.

“Do you believe me; will you give yourself to me inside and out?” Bane asked in a thick voice as he increased the rhythm of his fingertip on her swelling clit. She was only capable of nodding before he met her mouth with his as he abruptly slid his entire length inside of her. Erin felt the sudden fullness as her body tried to suddenly accommodate him, she felt his strength and power as he shifted and started to move in a slow and even rhythm supporting most of his weight on his elbows.

He continued moving at a gentle rhythm, his body aching for release. Each time he sheathed himself into her his body begged for him to climax. While Bane willed his control to hold fast, he resumed the slow circles against her sensitive nub of flesh.

Erin felt near overwhelmed at the feel of his body sliding in and out of her and the feelings he was creating with his touch. She felt herself tumble into a chasm of electric bliss as her climax took over her body and soon Bane fell into the well of ecstasy after her.

She felt his body slowly lose its rigidity and he withdrew. He settled next to her and pulled her to his chest as he adjusted the comforter with its faded flowers around them. Erin rested her head on his chest, his strong heartbeat was loud under her ear and she slid her arms around his waist. 

As Bane tightened his arms around her and she relaxed against him, across the ocean, Selina and Bruce were finishing their meal with a bowl of sliced wild strawberries and a glass of dark red wine. Selina had been trying to shake the nagging feelings of dread that hovered around her, she looked across the table at Bruce. “I killed Bane,” she thought as she raised her glass to her lips and took a healthy sip. “I killed him.”

As Bruce speared a glistening and sweet wedge of fruit, back in The East End, Erin moved her hands from his waist and pulled at the tangled flimsy sheet that had migrated to the foot of the bed. She arranged the thin fabric to keep from tangling around her ankles as she climbed out of the bed and walked into the bathroom. 

Bane watched her retreating form and after the old toilet flushed and the pipes rattled, she emerged with the beat-up pack of cigarettes. She already had one lit before she sat down in the shabby upholstered chair. His fingertips tingled with the recent memory of touching her when the smooth line of her thigh was exposed to his gaze as she crossed her legs and gave a long exhale. 

He continued to watch as she pulled the medical charts she had procured upon their escape. He arranged the pillows behind him and leaned back against the headboard, he looked over at the almost matching bedside table at a folded section of the newspaper. 

As Erin opened the first chart that bore her name, Bane unfolded the well-creased newspaper and read the first article that caught his eye. 

Gotham City’s New Mayor Caroline Tobinsky, “Sparing no expense,” on the upcoming New Year’s Celebration.

By Connie Winster

Gotham City’s new mayor Caroline Tobinsky is, in her words, “pumped up,” on the approach of the New Year. She has promised a party, “the city will never want to end.” I met up with Mayor Tobinksy in her modest office located on the ground floor at City Hall. 

Gotham’s new mayor is no frills and ready to bring Gotham into a New Year with new laws governing crime, vigilantism, and her zero-tolerance towards domestic terrorism. She states this New Year’s will be a celebration of victory over crime and Gotham’s ability to rebuild and thrive. 

Mayor Tobinksy vows to “spare no expense in the celebration of success for bringing Gotham back to life.” She has several top musical acts booked already and a “few tricks up my sleeve, that will certainly boost Gotham’s economy.” 

In the coming months, Mayor Tobinksy has a congested schedule to meet with local businesses and citizens to see how she can aid in restoring their homes, lives and overall sense of well-being and safety. 

Erin slid her eyes to the left and arched an eyebrow when she heard Bane chuckle and refold the newspaper before she moved her eyes back to the spiky scrawls of Dr. Cruz’s charting. 

Bane set the paper aside and watched as her eyes skimmed over the words, her complexion paled, and he heard her jaw pop as she clenched her teeth. 

“Positioned in dorsal lithotomy………exam performed…….under general anesthesia.” 

He watched her frown deepen as her eyes traced the curve of each written word composed of sloppy navy-blue ink letters. 

“Bladder catheterized…….drained 120cc of urine.”

“What is causing your perplexed state my dear doctor?” he asked and watched as her eyes moved across the skin of his exposed chest before slowly raising her eyes to his. 

Erin’s mind shuffled through an assortment of answers, her eyes dropped back to read more of Dr. Cruz’s painfully detailed documentation. 

“Stab incision through umbilicus.”

Her eyes flicked between the ink letters and Bane as he rolled to his side, facing her. She watched as the haphazardly draped comforter threatened to slip from his hips.

“Needle……through……uterine cavity.”

“I’m reading what was done to my body while I was secured to an operating room table,” Erin said and looked away and took a long, slow inhale. As her lungs filled with smoke and the room was blanketed in silence, Bane took the time to let his eyes and mind fill with the image of her sitting across from him. The blush pink of her skin showed through the threadbare fabric, he watched as she raised the cigarette to her lips. 

“What have you stumbled upon,” Bane asked as his eyes never raised from the creamy expanse of skin on her upper chest. 

She read further before answering, “specimens removed…...incisions closed….4-0 vicryl.”

Erin turned the page and skimmed towards the bottom before she looked over and gave him an unreadable smile. “Well, at least I’ll never have to worry about birth control again,” she said in a wry tone. “Apparently,” she added holding up the file, “I was given a complete hysterectomy.”

Bane searched her face for sadness, anger, or any visible emotion. She glanced back down at the paper and was delivered a small measure of relief at the last line of Dr. Cruz‘s report. “There were no surgical complications.”

“How many men have you killed, my dear? Before Dr. Gottlieb?” Bane asked as he adjusted the pillows and reclined. His intoxicating tone carried across the room and reached her ears.

Erin casually crushed her cigarette on the dingy fabric arm of the chair before blowing out a breath. She pulled the manila file folder emblazoned with Bane’s name onto her lap. She opened the folder and glanced briefly at a few black and white photos before she answered. 

“Administration….anesthesia…...”

“Just one,” she said and flicked her eyes down to the page before turning her attention to him. 

Bane left his expression blank and tilted his head to the side and held her gaze. She looked away when his gaze became too intimate. He found himself enjoying the pink hue that spread across her skin when she’d look away if his gaze grew too heavy. 

He watched as she scanned the first paper in the folder. “Tell me of that one,” he stated and settled back against the flimsy pillows as she scanned the surgical notes before talking. 

“Incision…...midline…….abdominal wall.”

“It was a little past my fifteenth birthday,” Erin started. “After my father died, my mom remarried in a hurry,” she said as her eyes scanned the erratic vital signs that had been notated on the next page and Dr. Cruz‘s surgical notes. 

“Biopsies……abdominal cavity……washed out.”

“Lucas Denno,” Erin said with a sneer and narrowed her eyes at the next page of notes as she trailed off into silence.

“Inflammation…...negative for necrosis……debris present.”

Bane’s voice shook her from her concentration. “This man hurt you?” he asked in a voice that tried to conceal his concern.

Erin half-smiled and shook a cigarette free and lit it, she took a deep inhale and held it trapped in her lungs as she organized her thoughts. 

She shook her head as she exhaled through her nose. “He was just,” Erin started and chuckled before adding. “We just never really clicked,” she stated factually. 

She moved her eyes through the rest of the pages in the file. Erin’s eyes widened a bit in interest as she read a series of correspondence notes from a polished mahogany desk located in the Pentagon.

As Erin spoke, her mind was transferred back to the past. She could suddenly smell the cloyingly sweet Tahitian vanilla room spray that her mother insisted on spraying anytime she walked through the living room. 

“Lucas wanted to start this tradition of taking a road trip to the Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls or Mount Rushmore every summer. I always hated going along and finally when I turned fifteen, he said I was old enough that I could stay home,” she said with a laugh before adding. “Of course, I was to be home at all times and answer all of their calls and absolutely no one allowed in the house.”

Bane listened with rapt fascination and let his eyes dance across her face and the myriad of emotions that moved across her features. She shook her head and mimicked her stepfather’s baritone voice. “No one comes in this house, is that understood young lady?”

Bane watched as her impression bled into emptiness and she looked away from the classified materials and gave him her full attention. Her wide, unblinking eyes met his and her words were the epitome of honesty. 

“And I didn’t let that man in the house, he broke in the fourth night they were gone.”

As Erin’s words hung in the air, across the city, Dr. Matheus Cruz stared hard at one of the lab’s computer screens. His phone sounded from his pocket and he glanced down at the screen flashing, “Bob.”

“Sir,” he answered. 

“What is the status of the cargo?”

“I am actively searching, sir.”

“Are both packages still intact?”

“I believe so,” Matheus answered and wrote down the names of areas that might be appealing for a murderer and a sociopath. 

“I will send some extra eyes.”

“That’s not necessary sir, I have the situation completely under control.”

“Do you now?”

“Well, there has been a slight hiccup in the shipping,” Matheus said with a stammer before adding. “I’m closing in sir.”

“You have 48 hours before I send extra handlers.”

“You’ll have your delivery by then sir,” Matheus said with a mostly strong voice. He ended the call and gritted his teeth, the last thing he wanted were people snooping around his lab.

As Matheus called to a few technicians that were cleaning up the mess Erin had left in her cell, across the city, Bane absorbed and processed her words as she looked back down to the file folder open across her lap.

“Lucas had just called me to make sure I was following the rules and to pass along questions from my mother,” she started and paused as she searched for the way to articulate the evening that ended her childhood. 

Bane watched as she frowned and opened her mouth to speak. “Besides making sure I was eating and locking the doors at night, my mom always told Lucas to remind me to check the mail.” She paused and gave a low chuckle, “for some reason, I could never remember to get the mail or the newspaper.”

“After I assured them that all was well in the house, I made the choice to go get the mail. It was only a little after 6 at night,” Erin said and looked over to where Bane was watching her. “I shouldn’t have,” she said with a sad smile. 

Bane clenched his jaw as she recounted the man that later ended up being a multiple felony offender who had always been able to slip out of an indefinite prison sentence, whether it be due to a damn good attorney or a bleeding-heart jury. Erin wrinkled her nose in disgust as she told him the events in painfully graphic detail of what followed when the blonde man forced her back into the house and disarticulated her mind and innocence.

Bane sat up in the bed, nearly ready to swing his legs over the side of the bed and cross the room to her. 

“After he was done for the moment with my body, he left me alone to go ransack the upstairs,” she said in a faraway tone. “Lucas kept a rifle inside the pantry door,” Erin said and could still feel the cool linoleum under her back as she was sprawled on the kitchen floor. 

Bane watched as she was transported back in time. “I managed to crawl to the pantry door and bring out the rifle,” she said and turned to look at Bane. 

“Lucas always kept it loaded, his theory was that having an unloaded gun could cost precious seconds. I still checked to make sure it was loaded though,” she said and added. “I could hear that pig upstairs going through the bedrooms.”

“Did you pursue him upstairs?” Bane asked in a solemn tone.

Erin shook her head, “no, it took me a few minutes to get to my feet. There’s no way I could have managed the stairs. I knew he’d come back to check on me,” she said in a dry tone. 

“Why did you not call the authorities?” he asked with curiosity.

Erin took a deep drag of her cigarette and considered his question. “Because,” she said with somewhat hesitation. “I didn’t want to sit in a courtroom and tell a bunch of strangers what that fucking swine did to my body. I knew there’d be photos and I’d have to look at his face. He’d probably be all cleaned up and in a nice suit too,” she practically spit. Bane nodded thoughtfully, he fully agreed. 

“I don’t know how much time passed before he came bounding back down the stairs, he had both hands full with his newly acquired acquisitions. He never once thought to keep even half an eye out for me,” Erin said with a giggle.

Her breath caught and hitched in her chest for a moment as she remembered the way he had practically skipped down the stairs, his arms full of her mother’s jewelry and great aunt’s diamond brooch. She clenched her jaw as she remembered the sight of her blood still wet on his partially zipped pants. 

“I was waiting for him in the kitchen though,” she said with an unreadable tone. “I was leaning against the table with the rifle raised and aimed at the doorway,” Erin said remembering how heavy the gun had felt and the blood dripping from her body. The swollen drops of blood had splashed on the stark white tile. 

“His expression was priceless,” she said with a genuine smile. “I told him to get on his knees,” Erin said and looked at the dusty floorboards and a solitary brown spider cozy in the center of its web. “I made him tell me what he was planning on doing next, I demanded he answer every one of my questions.” 

Erin shook her head, “he answered every question I had. I’m fairly sure he thought that I wasn’t going to shoot him,” she said with a grin before adding. “But I never made that promise.”

“When I was satisfied with his answers, I told him to get to his feet,” she said and paused as her eyes looked past him. 

When she lapsed into silence Bane asked, “why did you tell him to rise to his feet?”

Erin answered immediately, “because I was going to tell the cops that he charged me. They would have seen from the bullet’s trajectory that he would have been kneeling, I wasn’t going to risk that. Plus,” she said with a nod, “I liked the relief that flashed across his face, the…”

“Hope?” Bane asked and was able to bring a knowing smile to her lips.

“Yes. And when he looked at me, his dark eyes filled to the brim with hope that I was just a stupid girl, a girl he broke. I pulled the trigger.”

“It was the most spectacular thing I have ever seen,” Erin said with unashamed awe. 

“Those goddamn eyes vaporized with the bullet’s force of impact. His head burst in slow motion, his skull exploded against the wall in a sort of homage to Jackson Pollack painting,” she said as her lips twisted into a smile.

“I will never forget the sound of his grey matter landing on the walls. It stuck with the familiarity and intimacy of a lover, it was though,” she said and trailed off into silence.  


She closed her eyes and leaned back in the chair. “It was as though it had found its home.”

Bane was surprised with the new feelings that were starting to take root in his tumultuous mind, “what do you need right now?”

“I’d actually like a day to just be lazy,” she said with a laugh and smashed the nearly burnt down cigarette in the same spot as the last. The musty upholstery gave up a small puff of cloud under the pressure before she added. “I would love a whole day being a lounge lizard, wrapped up in a robe with a pot of coffee and a book.” 

“You may have the reptilian day you desire my dear,” Bane said and watched a momentary incredulous expression wash across her face.

“That would be too wonderful for words,” she said feeling a trace of excitement course through her veins. “Where will you be?” Erin asked as she closed his file and set it aside. 

“With you.”

“You want to spend the day being lazy with me?”

“I will be more industrious than you,” he started with a chuckle. “But I shall be here with you,” Bane said before adding. “However, after tomorrow, I’ll need you to return the chip.”

Erin came back to reality at the mention of the small chip she had hid under the sink. “Oh yes, that,” she said as she rose from the faded fabric of the chair and tightened the thin sheet around her body. 

*D.H. Lawrence helped with some dialogue


	6. Changes

Bane watched her disappear into the bathroom, he heard a splash before the sound of the tub draining reached his ears. He stood up from the bed and walked to the doorway where his eyes found her sitting on the porcelain edge of the tub. 

Erin stared down at the water as it swirled down the rusty drain, after it was nearly empty, she replaced the cracked plug and started to refill the tub. Bane watched her with silent interest, his eyes finally settling on her shoulder blades that moved under her skin with the movement of cranking the faucets. 

Erin glanced over her shoulder at him when she felt the weight of his gaze, she smoothed a few errant strands of hair away from her eyes. He had not felt it necessary with covering his body with the shabby bed linen and her gaze traveled the length of his bare flesh from where he stood in the doorway. 

Bane’s eyes locked with hers when she raised her eyes to his. “Will you be okay here for a short time my dear?”

“Where are you going?”

Bane ignored her question as he walked fully into the bathroom and towards where she was still sitting. 

Erin’s blush spread across her face and body like wildfire with each step he took. Her mind was nearly overwhelmed with the memory of the capacity his body had to titillate and cause soft moans to tumble from her lips. 

Bane fought a smile as he knelt in front of her, he brushed the few stray hairs that had stubbornly refused to move away from her face before addressing her. “To start procuring an army from the legion of the many oppressed Gothamites,” he said as he pushed the hair to stay in place behind her ear. His fingertips traced along her earlobe as he leaned forward and pressed his lips lightly against hers. 

Erin raised a hand to cup against the side of his face and leaned forward to deepen the kiss. He allowed himself to smile when he finally broke their kiss and left her to finish filling the bathtub. 

While she absorbed and dissected his words, across Gotham City, Matheus Cruz was handing out verbal marching orders to several techs.

“I want all of you out scouring the city for those two,” he started. “Look everywhere, no place should be considered out of the question for them to hole up. If anyone comes across them, be careful and call me immediately.”

Matheus crossed the metal flooring of the lab and unlocked a slim cabinet, he pulled out a bag that contained hypodermic needles that were filled with clear liquid. As he handed each tech several needles, he offered up a few more words. 

“This tranquilizer is strong enough to stop a stampeding bull, do be sure you don’t let that little cunt get her hands on them.”

Back in the East End, after Bane dressed, he made his way down to the lobby of the rundown hotel. As soon as he came into the sleazy hotel owner‘s view, the man raised his hands and babbled unintelligible stammers through his quivering lips that might have been, “please don’t kill me.”

“Calm yourself,” Bane demanded of the now trembling slimy man as he crossed the hotel lobby. “Sit,” he ordered and pointed to the small rolling chair behind the desk. 

The man oozed over into the chair; Bane looked around the nearly deserted lobby. His eyes landed on the skinny whore that had been trolling for business earlier at the bottom of the hotel’s steps. She looked up from filing her nails that were painted an inky black. Her eyes met Bane’s for a couple of seconds before she returned her attention back down to her hands. 

Bane regarded the overly dyed redhead for a moment before leveling his gaze at the cowering inn keep. “Do you own this establishment?”

The man stuttered as he tried to form the single syllable. “Yes.”

Bane nodded in satisfaction as he peppered the man with questions about the number of floors, rooms, occupants, and financial status. The greasy man grew a hair calmer as he answered Bane’s rapid-fire inquiries.

Bane continued to be pleased with the answers, especially after the man with the oily bald spot on the crown of his head stated that he owned the hotel solely and had for nearly three decades. The man also revealed that the fifth, sixth and seventh floors were never used and served mostly as storage areas and employee break rooms.   
Bane paced the oblong throw rug in the lobby, the wool fibers flattened under his heavy footfalls. He turned towards the man who was startled by the abrupt movement and cowered while mewing like a newborn baby. “I will be commandeering your hotel for an undetermined length of time,” Bane started, and the sweating man’s eyes widened as his mouth grew dry and fell open. 

“From this moment forward, you will assemble all information you have on everyone that works here in an orderly fashion and deliver it to me. You will also begin to log everyone that walks through these doors and all that happens here in the East End and the rest of Gotham.”

“For this, you shall retain your life and existence,” Bane said in a voice that made the red headed whore pause in moving the emery board around the rounded edges of her lacquered nails. 

The man barely managed to nod, overcome with relief that he wouldn’t be killed. Bane nodded again. “Also beginning today, the unoccupied floors you mentioned will be cleaned out and off limits. Is that understood?” he asked in a dangerous tone that caused the sleazy man’s bowels to clench.

The slimy man at the desk who was at home doing back strokes in the shallow end of the gene pool was at least smart enough to recognize his place on the food chain and hierarchy as he stared up at Bane. His body was bathed in fear and he knew on a cellular level exactly where he stood in regard to strength, intelligence, and capabilities. 

“Ye...ye...yes,” he managed as Bane’s formidable frame towered over him. He trembled in the powerful shadow that Bane cast. 

Bane nodded and turned his attention to the brassy haired hooker, “what is your name child?” 

“Child? Shit mister. I ain’t no child,” the young whore answered with a practiced petulant pout. Bane walked towards her and stopped shy a few feet away and stared down at the lithe girl with long legs, lean thighs, and the bright red loop through her navel. 

“Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice. But I say I will end the world at my pleasure,” Bane said in a voice that sounded from the bottom of a wishing well devoid of dreams.

“Tabitha,” she answered and looked down at the pointed toes of her scuffed high heels. 

“Tabitha,” Bane said after a moment. “I need you to perform a few tasks for me.”

She looked up with a slow and lazy smile. “You almost had me fooled for a minute,” she said in a knowing tone.

Bane tilted his head and narrowed his eyes as she laughed. “What sort of jobs mister?” Tabitha asked and then added. “You want me to fuck you or ya woman? Or both of ya?” she asked with a smirk. 

Her smile fell and her laugh evaporated along with her breath when Bane’s eyes seemed to blanket her in a darkness that was filled with cold, devoid of life. “These tasks will not require you to remove your clothes,” he started with a low tone and she was nodding in agreement before he finished speaking. 

As Bane gave Tabitha a series of orders, upstairs in room number 328, Erin was immersed up to her neck in the hot bubbly water. She relaxed her back against the porcelain edge of the tub and closed her eyes. Her mind was erratic and behind her closed eyelids, she replayed Bane’s warm touch against her body. 

A small frown began to crease her smooth forehead as her subconscious mind began to switch to a darker and older memory. She opened her eyes to erase the visuals her mind was painting; she didn’t want to relive the fifteenth year of her life. 

Erin blew out a deep breath and fished the wash rag from the bottom of the tub, she wrung out the water and placed the wet cloth across her eyes. She tried to force her thoughts in a more pleasant direction and failed as Bane waited downstairs in the lobby. He watched as the hooker left with his instructions written on a scrap of newspaper with a green eyeliner pencil. 

While Bane waited for the whore to return, upstairs in the vanilla scented bathwater, Erin’s frown returned in full force as her mind reread Bane’s medical chart and the letters between Dr. Cruz and a high-ranking man at the Pentagon. 

She shook her head and wrinkled her nose in disgust as she read about the plan for a race of super soldiers. DNA and genetic modifications were planned to produce offspring that were strong, intelligent, and held a broken moral compass. Erin felt a surge of anger when she recalled one of the letters from Matheus Cruz about her status after having miscarried for the fourth time. Matheus had written that her body had spontaneously rejected all the pregnancies and that he had performed a complete hysterectomy. 

Erin clenched her fists in the hot water when her mind zoomed in on the words from the Pentagon desk that would most likely be seared in her mind for many years to come. 

“Put her down.”

The next images her subconscious pulled to the front of her mind were the series of correspondence from Matheus to the man who sat behind the brilliantly polished desk at the wall to wall carpeted office in the Pentagon. In the next couple of pieces of communication, Matheus had requested permission to keep Erin as a personal project. He had gone on to explain about several exotic viruses and experimental vaccines that he had wanted to try out on a female specimen of Eastern European descent.

Erin clenched her teeth until her jaw popped when she read Matheus’s further request to gain possession of her body to try out some homemade hormone therapies. The Pentagon had agreed and released any and all claims to her body. 

As Erin tried again to banish her disturbed thoughts to the recesses of an abysmal chasm, Bane watched as Tabitha returned. He smirked as she skipped down the pitted sidewalk, happy to have some cash in her hand that didn’t require her to suck some random cock or be brusquely penetrated by some cash paying lowlife who had rough hands and bad breath.

Before Bane had left room number 328, he had snagged a few crisp bills from the white pillowcase that was uniquely decorated with Erin’s bloody handprints. Bane had given 

Tabitha half of the agreed payment in advance. She bounded up the hotel’s concrete steps, one hand was closed around the handle of a grocery store paper bag and the other fist clenched around the sizable paper bill in her warm palm. 

Tabitha eagerly accepted the other half of her payment after Bane approved her worth with following his orders to the very last green letter. She watched as Bane left her view, he had explained when to expect another well-paid task. 

After he had disappeared from her view, Tabitha looked down at the hand that clutched a close to staggering amount of money for her. She was close to being overcome with a happiness she thought had withered and died years ago when she realized that for the next several days, she might not have to have any paid intrusions or invasions of her every bodily orifice.

Bane returned to room 328, he walked to the partially opened bathroom doors and peeked through the opening. 

Erin’s mouth was set in an almost relaxed line with the damp fabric obscuring the top of her face. He tapped his fingers against the smooth wood grain of the bathroom door.

“Yeah?” she called without taking the washrag from her eyes. 

“May I come in?”

“What’s the password?” she asked in a teasing tone.

In the space before Bane answered, across the globe in Milan, Bruce and Selina were returning to their posh hotel. They had closed the day with a walk along the vibrant sand, Selina still had a nagging thought that trouble was on the horizon. 

As Bruce and Selina arrived back at their lush suite with one hundred-dollar bottles of champagne chilling on ice, back in room 328 of the East End hotel, Bane’s low voice reached Erin’s ears. His tone caused a shiver to run from the front of her forehead to the tips of her toes. 

“Heat cannot be separated from fire, or beauty from the eternal.”

“Close enough,” she said without missing a beat and pulled the washcloth from her face to see him walk in carrying the wrinkled brown grocery bag. 

“Whatcha got there?” she asked casually enough but retaining a fair amount of caution. 

Bane reached into the bag’s depths and brought forth an ankle length deep forest green bath robe. 

Erin couldn’t stop her lips from pulling into a happy smile. “How did your recruiting go?” she asked in a nervous tone. 

Bane walked further into the steam filled room and sat down on the edge of the bathtub. “I am fanning the flames,” he said and let his eyes dance along the wet and heat flushed skin of her neck and tops of her exposed shoulders. 

She brought her eyes to the plush green chenille robe he had clutched in his massive hands, “thank you.”

“I’ve secured the top three floors of the hotel for your use,” he started and continued until her confused expression gave way to first shock and astonishment and left her with a momentary loss of words. 

“With a fair amount of work, you will be able to run a clinic from here. Just tell me whatever you need, and I will ensure that you have it,” he said as he squeezed his fingers around the soft fabric. He imagined what Erin’s flesh would feel like though the velvety fabric.

“I was doing some thinking about you,” Erin said and then added in a rush. “About your level of pain, that is.”

Bane kept a smile from his lips as she continued after clearing her throat and soaking the washcloth again in the heady warm vanilla scented water. “I could implant an internal pain pump and fill it with a combination of narcotics to provide a constant amount of pain control,” she said before adding. “As far as your mask, you would probably want to keep that, and I can see if I can put together a new batch Venom as an inhalant. In your chart Dr. Cruz outlined the chemical components and precise ratios.”

Bane watched a few beads of water accumulate across the top of her upper lip. Her words had penetrated his mind somewhat but her naked flesh was proving to be a potent distraction. 

He forced himself to concentrate when he registered her speaking again, “the internal pump should help with the majority of the pain, but you won’t get back to feeling like you were without the addition of the Venom.”

Erin paused as Bane’s eyes openly traveled across her visible skin. She shifted in the tub and added, “the benefits of course far outweigh the risks.”

“What are the risks and benefits my dear?” Bane asked as he was barely able to tear his eyes from following the bead of water that trailed down the surface of her skin. 

“Well, there is always the risk of a post-operative infection,” she said as she poured some liquid bath gel on the washcloth and worked it into an opalescent bubbly lather.

Bane listened as all traces of nervousness or feelings of discomfort vanished as she fell back into her comfortable place of clinical care. He listened as she explained the risks of the procedure and the length of healing time and temporary physical limitations. Bane heard her spoken words but also heard the quiet strength that lie behind them, as she explained she scrubbed the soapy cloth against her hands and fingernails and over her elbows. 

“The biggest benefit though,” Erin said with authority as she scrubbed the cloth over her forearms and up to her shoulders. “Is with the internal pump, even if your mask is deliberately damaged or somehow malfunctions, it won’t be nearly as hobbling or detrimental.” 

As Erin and Bane continued discussing the pain pump procedure and Bane asked about the specific process, across Gotham in the hidden prison laboratory Dr. Matheus Cruz had holed himself up in his office and was reviewing the city’s underground infrastructure. He knew from reading newspaper articles and watching the local news that Bane and his minions had been crawling around under the city as they followed their orders. Matheus was hoping that Bane would return to a subterranean hiding place. 

As Matheus began researching the various entrances to the city’s sewer systems, back in room 328 of the hotel in the East End, Erin emerged from the bathroom dressed in the warm green robe. Bane was seated in the poorly upholstered chair and was reading through one of the medical charts. From her angle, she couldn’t discern whose chart he was reading. 

He looked up as she stifled a yawn and crossed the room to the queen-sized bed. She straightened the mussed bed linen and crawled under the covers. Bane’s voice broke through her growing fog of sleepiness. 

“Before you woke up in the plastic cage, did you share your bed with anyone?”

Erin gave a small yawn, “no, I was quite single.” She shrugged and added, “it was difficult with my schedule to have a relationship.”

“You mentioned earlier about dating a pathologist,” Bane stated.

“I went out with a couple of them, but nothing ever serious came from them,” she said with a shake of her head. 

“Why not?” Bane asked, pleased to hear she didn’t have a lover in Gotham but also curious why she chose to not have one.

“Sex makes you too vulnerable,” she said with a shudder, not thinking. Erin paused after she had spoken and Bane watched as a violent blush filled her face when she realized she hadn‘t considered what he had seen on her face as he had filled her body and made her moan with full abandonment.

She rolled over and faced away from him and eventually crashed heavily into the arms of sleep while Bane continued reading through the charts she had snagged during her hasty search and exit of the lab. While he read through the pages of notes that Dr. Cruz had notated about her procedural history, he glanced over at her sleeping form. 

He put the stiff folders aside and slipped out of clothes and killed the room’s light before sliding under the covers. He stretched out next to her and drew her back into his solid embrace. 

Erin stirred at the feel of his arms settling around her, she mumbled under her breath as he tucked her body back against his. Bane’s broad chest pressed flush against the smooth fabric of her robe and the heat from his body was a comfort that she registered in her semi-waking state. 

She further stirred when he let a hand skim down her waist and rest just above the swell of her hip. Erin rubbed a hand across her eyes as a low sigh escaped her lips when Bane began moving his hand in small circles over her belly. The downy fabric of the robe was a stark contrast to the scarred skin of his palm.

Erin shifted around until she was facing him, he trailed his hand to the back of her thigh and pulled her body closer. She pressed her face into his neck and laid a soft kiss over his pulse, her senses growing overwhelmed. Erin continued kissing a path up his neck and along his jaw line until Bane dipped his chin and pressed his lips to hers. She closed her eyes and lost herself in the gentle pressure of his kiss.

Bane pressed his lips to her forehead and smoothed her hair behind her ear, he tightened his arms around her and pulled her to his chest. Erin settled comfortably, her body fitting against him like a perfect puzzle piece. 

Bane listened as her breathing slowed and grew steady and even, he eventually followed her down the rabbit hole of dreamland. Erin’s dreams were benign and not memorable, but Bane’s mind was assaulted with a repetitive view of Talia leaving his sight for what would become the last time. 

While he traversed the world of dreams, he was plagued by a perpetual double feature of her touching the outside of his mask for the last time. In the dream his subconscious was directing, he could still smell the faint scent of lavender that had lingered from her last touch. 

He was helpless and unable to raise an arm to stop her or call after Talia’s retreating form. Erin was stirred awake when Bane began talking in his sleep. At first his words were barely decipherable and then they took on more flesh and she realized he was pleading.

“Talia…...,” Bane called out in the dark room and tightened his arms around Erin.

Erin moved out of his embrace and left the lights off as she moved cautiously to the bathroom. She returned with the washcloth she had used earlier, she had saturated it and wrung it out before returning to the bed. Erin folded the fabric into a rectangular shape and moved the cool cloth across his forehead. 

He awoke under her touch as she moved the damp fabric over his face and neck, in the dim room she could barely make out his features. But she recognized grief and pain. Erin knew that he had most likely read the autopsy report on Talia that had been duplicated in the back of his chart. 

“She wouldn’t have suffered long,” Erin whispered as she pressed the cloth to the back of his neck. 

Bane closed his eyes at Erin’s touch, he could feel the soft press of her body through her robe. His mind was a furious whirlpool as he processed the feelings that were fighting in his body.

He felt a well of possession for the woman in his arms which was rivaling the sorrow he felt for the loss of Talia.

“She is gone,” Bane finally said as he captured her lips with his own. 

Bane moved his hands along her waist and slid inside the folds of her robe, she gave a low sigh as his hands came in contact with the bare skin of her stomach. He traced a line around her belly button before he started toying with the knot of her belt. 

Erin abandoned the washcloth and traced her fingertips across the broad expanse of his chest, savoring the feel of his skin as he tugged at her belt and began untying it. She moved closer to him and pressed a kiss to the hollow of his throat. 

Erin’s hands kneaded his sides as she kissed her way down his chest and caught one of his nipples lightly between her teeth, she quickly kissed where her teeth had been. She left a trail of kisses across his chest, the scars a veritable map under her lips. 

Bane placed his fingertips under her chin and lifted her face towards him, he leaned down and kissed her with a growing urgency. While their lips were in union, Bane slid a hand inside of her robe and lightly cupped her breast. 

A small moan escaped Erin as he pulled her robe open and ran his thumb over the nipple on her right breast. Bane broke their kiss and pushed her back to the mattress, he lowered his mouth to cover her nipple. Erin arched her back into him as he let one hand slide down to stroke along her inner thigh, his touch was ticklish and earned a breathy gasp from her lips. He felt a twinge in his cock at the sound and the thoughts that it elicited. 

Erin shivered involuntarily as Bane gently brushed his fingertips upwards and came to rest at the apex of her upper thighs. 

Bane never stopped touching her as he shifted until he was positioned between her thighs, he opened her robe further and watched her face in the dim room as her desire built. She uttered a low moan as her eyes trailed down his body and found him hard with desire.

Bane’s eyes searched hers in the near dark as he slid his hands to rest on the smooth flesh of her inner thighs. He urged her to part them as he settled closer to her body. Erin felt a rush of warmth and wetness to her femininity as he slowly guided his entire length into her. 

He leaned down and caught her mouth, he growled into her mouth as she squeezed her thighs tighter around his waist as he increased his rhythm. “Are you okay?” Bane asked as he gripped her hips and let their bodies kiss. 

Erin nodded and Bane gave a groan of pleasure as he felt her body tighten around him with each of his thrusts. 

A low moan tumbled from her lips as her climax surprised her as it ripped through her body, Bane slid a hand from her hip to rest at the base of her spine. He reveled in the sensation of her body squeezing around his cock, almost as though it was trying to milk him dry. 

Bane felt his own control begin to decline and he dropped his head to her shoulder and whispered against her skin. “Don’t leave me too,” he said in a voice so low she almost didn’t hear him. 

He found himself being swept up in his own release as she circled her arms around his muscular neck and pressed her lips to his ear. “I was destined to spend my life with you as soon as I saw you,” she whispered on a slow exhale as he remained sheathed inside of her. 

As night bled into dawn, they both fell back into a sated and dreamless sleep, the sweat drying on their bodies as they laid in each other’s arms. 

As the sunlight streamed in the hotel’s dirt and bird shit stained windows, Bane untangled his arms from around Erin’s sleeping form. He crossed to the dingy fabric covered chair and reopened Erin’s file, his eyes found several reports of tests that had been performed on her.

“Have you been entirely honest with me?” Bane asked awhile later as soon as he registered Erin’s wakefulness.

“Mmm, yes,” she mumbled and rolled to her side, caught off guard by his question.

“You have been completely forthcoming about everything I have asked you?” he asked from his spot across the room in the worn-out chair. 

“Well, I might have omitted what wasn’t relevant,” she said with a deep yawn as she rubbed her eyes. 

“You don’t believe that equates to lying?”

“Omission is not the same as lying,” she argued petulantly sitting up in the bed as she pushed the covers off her legs. 

“I’m not going to go inform a woman that not only is she now a widow but for some reason during surgery her husband sprouted an erection. I’m not going to tell this now widow that as her husband’s lacerated spleen continued to expel a continuous flow of dark blood that he ejaculated and then died shortly thereafter,” Erin said rising from the bed.

She stalked towards him and practically spit. “I’m not going to go out to the young couple that just lost their child and tell them during that the emergency surgery I pressed small circular paddles to their son’s heart and soon smelled the sweet scent of his young singed flesh. I’m not going to tell them that their son shit and pissed himself as his heart ceased   
to beat.”

Bane watched the rapid rise and fall of her chest, her slightly parted lips offering a scant view of her soft pink tongue. Her hair was mussed from sleeping on her side and her cheekbones were flushed with a line of color. 

Bane let his gaze wander over her narrowed eyes that were fringed with dark lashes and down the lean line of her neck. The deep green fabric of her robe was parted just enough for his eyes to find her prominent collarbones.

“What do you need to implant the pain pump and set up your clinic?” he asked.

“What?” Erin said in an incredulous tone at his sudden conversational U-turn.

“What do you need to implant the pain pump and set up your clinic?” Bane repeated as he extended a small tablet and pen towards her.

“I’d need to examine you first before I could make a list,” Erin said after a confused pause and took the paper and pen from him. 

Bane stood and pulled his shirt off over his head and closed the distance between them. “Where would you like to examine me?” he asked as he looked down at her. Erin let a small smile play at her lips, “over there is fine,” she said and gestured at the bed. 

The air was disturbed by his form as she watched him walk past, he sat on the edge of the bed and she climbed onto the bed behind him. He felt her fingertips soft against the skin of his back and trail the length of the scar that ran the entire length of his spine. 

“I wish I had some coffee,” she mumbled as she probed his taut flesh with her fingertips.

She continued to talk under her breath as she ran her hands over his back and paused only to make notes with the ink pen. Erin wrote several notes as she addressed him. “After the results of a few tests, I can slide the delivery catheter here,” she said as he felt the press of her fingertips before they slid around to the front of his abdomen. 

“Then I will surgically make a pocket here,” she said as she laid her palm flat against his side. “The pump is about the size of a hockey puck and I’ll load it with morphine sulfate and a few other sidecars.”

Erin kept her hand pressed to his abdomen as she leaned forward and kissed the back of his neck. “I could use an assistant too,” she said as she set the pen side and wrapped her other arm around him. 

Bane closed his eyes as her hands rested on his body, he would have been content to sit like that for a while. “Where are you going?” she asked when he got up from the bed and put on the same shirt. 

“I’m going to fetch some information from the lobby and find you some coffee,” he said as he went towards the door. “Don’t open this for anyone,” he stated as he left the room.   
By the time Bane returned to the room, Erin had brushed her teeth and hair and secured it in place with a stretched out rubber band that she found under the sink when she checked to make sure the flash drive was still in place. She pushed out a shaky breath as she washed and dried her face before she got dressed, she was pulling the bed covers in place when Bane returned with a box of newspapers and yellow papers with scribbled handwriting. 

Erin frowned when her eyes fell on the redheaded Tabitha in tow holding a sad looking coffee pot, chipped blue mug, and a few tired looking packets of real sugar. 

“Who’s your friend?” she asked and crossed her arms under her breasts. 

Bane struggled to not smile at her jealous surge, “this is Tabitha. She shall be the assistant that you desire.”

“Well, okay then. I’m, um, Erin and I guess I should make you a list,” she said with a look of slight bewilderment as she fetched the pen and pad. They shook hands before Erin sat down at the desk and began composing two lists. The first was for Bane’s pain pump procedure and the other was the beginning of what she would need for a complete clinic. 

Erin glanced over at Tabitha occasionally as she wrote the lists. She looked over her nearly concave abdomen and sallow thighs. “Do you think you’ll be able to get all of this?” Erin asked as she passed the first list to Tabitha. 

Tabitha took the list and looked over it, “yeah probably. On the weekends I head down to Gotham General and blow a few of the docs by the supply room. There’s also a pharmacist that works the night shift and likes me to strip while he fills prescriptions, he smells bad but pays top dollar,” Tabitha said in a factual tone and tucked the list into her small beaded purse. 

Tabitha passed Erin the sweetened French roast coffee in the chipped mug and left with some cash that Bane passed to her as he locked the door behind her. 

“Oh, I’m now commencing my lazy day,” Erin said when Bane turned back to face her after locking the door. He watched as she drank deeply from the ceramic mug before topping it off with fresh coffee from the hard water stained coffee pot. She ripped open two more packets of granulated sugar until her sips turned sinfully sweet. 

Bane watched with amusement as she grabbed one of the books that he’d Tabitha retrieve when she bought the robe. Erin set her coffee on the nightstand and laid down on the bed on her belly. She opened the book, the spine creasing as she settled down to read. 

Bane watched her a few moments more before taking the box that the slimy man in the lobby had compiled. He had been as neat as he was capable and provided a list of drug rings, underground trafficking circles and ammunition supplies. 

The two of them passed the day with a quiet yet comforting calm. At one point, Erin lapsed into a light nap and awoke when Tabitha knocked as she returned with a paper bagged lunch. 

Evening approached when Erin set the book aside and let her eyes find the back of Bane’s head as he concentrated on the list of people that had checked into the hotel for longer than an hour. 

Bane slowed his reading when he felt the weight of Erin’s gaze and stopped completely when her words washed around him. “I’m going to need to alter our agreement.”


	7. She's Still Here

Bane’s voice was even and carried not a shred of readable emotion when he finally spoke. 

“What exactly do you feel the need to alter, my dear?”

“I want to know all of your plans. I don’t want to be left in the dark about anything,” Erin said as she sat up among the messy covers and stretched her arms overhead. 

She watched as Bane slowly turn towards her. “Anything else?” he asked with a smirk. 

“Yes, actually,” she said and swung her legs over the side of the bed. “I want to know what you meant when you said you would share everything with me.”

Bane sat back and regarded her for a few silent moments. “I will provide you with everything you need, and I will keep you safe and close to my side,” he said and watched a thousand questions tease at the tip of her tongue. 

“That sounds like a marriage,” Erin said and laughed until his response killed her ability to speak for a moment. 

“Would you like that my dear?”

“I’ll take the fifth,” she said quickly and was relieved when a few sharp knocks at the door hit the pause button on their conversation. 

Bane rose from the chair and cross to open the door to reveal Tabitha standing there with several large plastic bags filled with the medical supplies on Erin’s wish list. Bane stood aside to let her enter the room and Tabitha deposited the bags on the messy bed. 

Erin nodded as she looked over the bag’s contents, “this is great. Thank you, Tabitha.”

“Oh, please call me Tabby,” she said with a wave of her slim wrist and dark gleaming nails. 

“Tabby, I like that. Thanks for getting everything I asked for.”

“Sure doc, I know a lot of people down at the hospital.”

Tabby didn’t spend too much longer in their room, as soon as Bane passed her payment for the delivery, she was eager to go out dancing and have a few overpriced fruity cocktails. 

Erin had instructed her to return at mid-morning the next day so she could serve as her surgical technician. The money was more than enough to assuage any nerves and Tabby nodded enthusiastically and headed out to the darkening streets and alleys of the East End. 

As night fell across Gotham, Erin yawned deeply and stretched under the thin covers. “I’m so tired from doing nothing today,” she remarked with a soft laugh and rolled onto her side. Bane watched as she tucked the pillow under her head. “You should get some sleep, tomorrow is a big day,” she called to him. 

Bane closed the folder he had been reading and set it aside. He turned off the lights and the room was blanketed in darkness as he crawled into bed next to her. He brushed her hair away from her neck until he bared her skin. A small smile played across Erin’s lips as he pulled her body back flush against his.

As sleep found Erin and Bane in their newly commandeered residence, Matheus Cruz had fallen asleep in front of the computer screen. Rolls of blueprints were spread on every available flat surface. As he dozed, his water glass bled swollen beads of condensation that rolled down the side of the cup and landed on the smooth surface of the worktable.

The following morning, Erin milled about the room mumbling to herself as she pulled on a pair of dark cotton pants and close to matching top that Tabby had dropped off for her. 

She paused in her scrutiny of the medical supplies she had at hand and crossed the room to pull a glass of water from Bane’s hand. “Nothing to eat or drink before surgery,” she stated and moved the glass to the bedside table before she went back to mentally outlining her surgical prep and approach. 

Erin was counting her sterile suture packets when Tabby delivered a few sharp knocks to the hotel room door. Bane opened the door to let her in and then watched with an impassive and unreadable expression as Erin and Tabby proceeded to prepare the room. 

Bane sat in the upholstered chair and watched as Erin recited instructions to Tabby in an incredibly detailed and concise order, her voice was all clinical in nature. Tabby smiled as she felt like she was back in school, but she did as she was instructed in as efficient a manner as she was capable. 

Erin’s mind worked out potential surgical variables and details, she was transported back to sterile operating room suites commanding the undertaking of trying to save a stranger’s life. 

As Tabby and Erin spread a crisp white sheet across the bed and tucked it under the mattress, Erin kept stealing glances over at Bane where he was leaning back in the chair with his eyes closed. She let her eyes liberally run over him as she secured a second sheet folded lengthwise from the supply of pilfered linen from the hospital. 

“How long have you been in Gotham?” Erin asked and passed a couple pillowcases across the bed to Tabby. 

While Tabby fit a pillow in the clean cotton case, Erin stole a look back over at Bane. His muscular forearms were loosely crossed against his torso. Her eyes traced along the prominent veins that ran just under his skin, she trailed a lazy path up the sides of his arms and across his shoulders and broad chest. 

“About two years now.” 

Tabby’s voice tore Erin’s eyes from the smooth hollow at the base of his neck, untouched by any scars. 

Erin turned her attention to Tabby, “where were you before that? You can’t be more than what? 16?” Erin asked as she lined up glass bottles of anesthetic drugs on the squat bedside table.

“I’m twenty-one,” Tabby said slowly and then added with a glum tone at Erin’s arched eyebrow. “I’ll be eighteen in about two months.”

Erin smiled and felt a tangible amount of humor wash over her. She shook her head and kept her smile as she spoke. “How’s your health? I might be able to help if there is anything that’s bothering you,” Erin said as she filled a plastic syringe with a liquid that looked like sweet cream. This liquid however, commonly known in the OR suite as “milk of amnesia” often gave the surgical patient dreams about love as they floated in the anesthetic sea.

Tabby’s face split into a genuine smile and Bane cracked his eyes open to watch them. “Oh, I’m good doc,” she said and added. “Thanks though, I’m really careful with my, clients,” she said wrinkling her nose before shrugging resignedly. 

Erin nodded and filled another couple syringes, with a clear and then a light pink delightfully dulling drug. Her mind was going a million miles per hour and she was certain if she turned all the way to the left that she would find Bane’s eyes on her. His eyes piercing through her layers of skin, caressing her muscular fibers, and stroking her arterial walls.   
Erin felt a tremble threaten to present itself in her hands. She grabbed hold of a 1000ml plastic bag of saline and gripped a sterile intravenous starter kit. Erin pressed her lips together in a firm line and concentrated on the task of assembling the plastic lines into a workable order. 

Tabby pushed the rest of the flaccid pillows into the clean cases and stacked them on the edge of the bed. Erin had explained to her that Bane would be positioned on his side and she would use the pillows to prop his body securely in place. Tabby went about the other tasks that Erin had verbally outlined as Bane kept his gaze settled in the middle of Erin’s back.

As Tabby fluttered around the room, Erin finished assembling the intravenous lines and discarded the plastic caps. She licked her dry lips nervously as she double checked her labeled syringes and their contents. She found herself holding the syringes longer than should have been necessary. Her mind was slow to processing the words because of the emotional hailstorm that was turning her conscious mind into a ticking time bomb. 

Erin found herself on a foreign precipice. She was continually experiencing new and invading feelings that were slowly rocking her further and further away from her comfort zone. 

“How is this possible?” she thought as she closed her eyes and let her body remember Bane’s touch. 

“How can I have spent so long feeling nothing for anyone and then, this?”

Erin opened her eyes and flipped through the stack of sterile gauze and tan colored rolls of paper tape. “Maybe I’m really losing my mind,” she thought and failed to suppress a small giggle. 

She felt a slow blush fill her voice when Bane’s voice called to her back. “What is amusing you, my dear?”

In the small space of silence before Erin answered, Tabby had paused in laying out the stolen tools she had found when one of the cardiac surgeons had smuggled her in through the fire exit doors and fucked her on a stainless steel table in one of the hospital hallways. From her vantage point she could see the blush slowly fill Erin’s voice upon hearing Bane’s voice. 

Despite her young age, she recognized the signs and symptoms of love over lust. Tabby continued to watch as Erin turned towards Bane. 

Bane watched her gaze land first on his neck before slowly raising to meet his eyes. Erin’s lips were slightly parted, and she gave a sharp audible sigh when his eyes seemed to read the inside of her mind, body, and heart. 

He saw her eyes fill with a rich mixture of fear, unashamed passion and beautiful vulnerability touched with hesitation. “Well? Doctor?” he asked as she felt her chest tighten as her breathing slowed. 

The stone knot in her belly was momentarily forgotten in the wash of a heated blush as Tabby’s laugh cut through the deafening silence. “I’m going to give you two some privacy for a while,” she laughed as she dug a new pack of sealed cigarettes from her ivory beaded bag. “Don’t worry, I’ll knock first,” Tabby added as she turned the lock and secured the door closed behind her. 

As she made her way downstairs and outside shaking a cigarette loose from the new pack, the action made her relive her moment of goofy happiness at being able to buy a new pack of smokes. Tabby trapped a lungful of the smoke from the fresh pack, thankful she didn’t have to rely on the handful of used cigarette butts she usually plucked out of the street gutters. 

“What’s going on inside of your head doctor?” Bane asked and stood up from the paisley printed chair. As he crossed the room towards Erin to where she was rooted into place, caught between the sensation between fight or flight. 

Frozen.

As Bane closed the distance between himself and Erin, across the globe Selina and Bruce were soaking in their hotel room’s spacious Jacuzzi watching the stars appear. Bruce was still sensing Selina’s nervous energy and tried to assure her once again with the copy of Bane‘s autopsy report that he had obtained. 

What Bruce didn‘t know was that Dr. Cruz had arranged and produced a false autopsy report of Bane which was entered into public record.

Selina nodded and tried to force the belief of Bane‘s death to be as factual as gravity. As Bruce talked on about his idea of traveling to Ireland next, she found herself not super enthused because of the nagging thoughts she could not seem to peel off her skin. She didn’t care where they went but gave him a wide smile before leaning close and pressing her lips to his. “We can kiss the blarney stone,” Selina said affectionately and took a long sip of the expensive champagne. 

As more stars appeared across the sky over Milan, back in room #328 of the East End hotel which was close to becoming a makeshift operating room. Bane brushed his hands up Erin’s arms and rested them on her shoulders. Erin couldn’t contain her satisfied sigh as his strong hands kneaded the tense flesh of her shoulders and neck.

“Are you afraid to tell me?” Bane asked and slid his hands to settle at her waist. He pulled her into his embrace, and she inhaled deeply as the masculine scent of his body wrapped around her senses. She let herself immerse into the essence of leather and the smell of a strong male that emanated from his pores.  
Erin nodded against his chest as one of his hands slowly stroked up and down the length of her spine and slipped down to the waistband of her pants. He pushed the fabric down her hips and let it slide down her thighs to pool at her feet. 

She had no intelligible words as Bane gently pushed her back onto the bed and supported his weight on an elbow as he let his free hand move down past her belly button.   
Erin gasped as Bane’s rough fingertips stroked down the front of her plain cotton panties. Without much of a pause in his exploration, he easily snapped the fabric waistband of her panties and pulled the minimal fabric away from body. Bane felt her body tighten as he slipped a finger inside her, “don’t ever be afraid to tell me anything,” he said and paused before adding.

"I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my lids, and all is born again. I think I made you up inside my head.” Bane whispered against the hot skin of her neck as he slowly caressed her delicate and wet flesh. 

Erin raised her hips to meet his touch as he moved his lips in a trail up the smooth line of her neck before continuing. “The stars go waltzing out in blue and red, and arbitrary blackness gallops in. I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.”

Bane fumbled at his zipper while he nudged her thighs further apart. Erin gasped as he returned his touch to the swollen bundle of nerves that pulsed under his touch. He kissed along the line of her jaw and whispered above her parted lips. 

“I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed. And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane. I think I made you up inside my head,” Bane said and struggled not to moan when he pressed himself closer to Erin’s body. He dipped his head and brushed his lips over hers softly. When he felt her lips start to move under his, he ran his hands rhythmically up and down her thighs and broke the kiss to look down at her. 

“God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade. Exit seraphim and Satan's men. I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead,” he murmured. Bane moved one of his hands from her thigh to cup her jaw, he stroked the coarse pad of his thumb across her cheekbone. 

“I fancied you'd return the way you said. I think I made you up inside my head.” Bane’s eyes searched hers and she struggled to find words but found her ability to form a coherent sentence nonexistent at the moment. Erin cleared her throat but never let her gaze stray from his. 

“I…there’s something…I,” Erin stammered as a gasp tumbled from her lips. He reveled in the sounds that he forced from her lips. She lost herself in his penetrating gaze. “Tell me doctor,” he begged in a whisper and she tightened her thighs around his waist as she felt his hardened length press against her opening. 

“I love you,” Erin murmured on the barest of exhales. 

“I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead. I think I made you up inside my head," Bane said in a strained whisper before he pushed his full length inside of her. Erin cried out against his chest and grasped his upper arms. Bane groaned as her body gripped him snugly and he moved slowly in and out of her. He pulled Erin tight against him as he increased his rhythm until she felt a heaviness grow steadily low in her belly. 

Bane felt her body spasm and contract around him as her orgasm washed over her nervous system. He buried his face in Erin’s neck as she writhed under him and tried to maintain his rhythm until his own pleasure consumed him. Bane thrust a couple more times until he lost himself in the feel of her body and low, soft moans. “I love you too,” he managed as his breathing came in breathless pants.

Tabby returned a short time after Erin and Bane had cleaned up. Tabby knocked and Bane let her in as Erin was securing her hair back and off her face in a tight bun. She gave Tabby an embarrassed grin before passing her a rubber band and asking her to pull her hair back as well and then go wash her hands with a surgical scrub she had laid out next to the chipped bathroom sink.

While Tabby followed her marching orders to the sterile letter, Erin had Bane strip down to a pair of loose cotton pants. She directed him to a satisfactory position and then Erin began the process of starting an IV on him. While she worked, she repeated several possible surgical expectations. 

“I know I’m being redundant here, but I just want to reiterate that I’m not sure how much pain you might feel. You have such a high tolerance for opiates, and I worry that I don’t have enough anesthetic,” Erin started to say before Bane interrupted her worrisome statements. 

“I will be fine, I trust your hands doctor,” he said and caught her eyes. 

“This should take about 45 minutes,” Erin said and closed her hand over Bane’s. He wordlessly nodded as she tucked the pillows down and around his body. 

“I will be fine,” Bane repeated, and Erin nodded as Tabby emerged from the bathroom with freshly cleaned and scrubbed hands. 

Erin directed her on how to put on a gown and gloves on sterilely and followed suit after opening a surgical prep container and other supplies on a table fashioned by covering the room’s desk with a sky- blue sterile drape. 

Erin slid the needle of the milky anesthetic into his open IV line and watched him slip into a deep and sweet sleep. She prepped his scarred skin with a burnt orange colored betadine scrub and positioned a sticky drape over the intended surgical site. 

Erin glanced up at Tabby before she made her incision. “Are you okay with blood?”

“Shit doc, I’ve seen it all,” Tabby said with a laugh and watched Erin proceed with a small incision to Bane’s back. Erin manipulated the blade along the bony arch of his spine and exposed the stark white vertebra. 

Tabby passed her the clear polypropylene catheter and watched as Erin sutured one end in place, being careful to avoid excessive leakage of spinal fluid which could cause severe post-operative headaches and discomfort. 

Erin monitored Bane’s vitals on a portable cardiac monitor that Tabby had haggled for at a nearby pawn shop. She adjusted the level of narcotics he was receiving, unaware that he was completely able to hear everything that her and Tabby proceeded to discuss. Bane found his pain level tolerable and was more interested in the girl’s chatter as Erin worked.

“If you could pick up and change your life, what would you do?” Erin asked Tabby as she passed her a square woven gauze. 

Tabby briefly considered the question.” I’d love to go to cosmetology school and work in one of the salons close to downtown Gotham. 

“I could help you,” Erin said and sponged away a few drops of bright red blood before looking at Tabby and adding. “I have access to money; I absolutely hate to see you living off your body.”

Tabby watched as Erin stitched the first small incision closed before she moved around to the front of his abdomen and proceeded to draw her blade and press down in a steady five-inch line. She soaked up the blood that welled to the surface of the split skin. 

Tabby spoke as Erin created a pocket of sorts in between the taut skin and strong muscle layers of Bane’s abdomen. Erin pressed a bandage to the area and directed Tabby to hold it in place as she replied to her statement. 

“That’s way too much doc. I’m not really the nicest girl, ya know?” Tabby started and added. “I’d love to keep running errands for you two though.”

“Tabby, I don’t think you’re a nun or even remotely in the same ballpark,” Erin scoffed and pushed the pump into the pocket she had created in Bane’s abdomen. 

“I’d just like to see you live past twenty-one,” Erin added as she filled the pump with morphine sulfate. 

“You’d actually do that?” Tabby asked with a fair amount of astonishment in her voice.

“Yes, I would,” Erin said as she moved the pump around until she was satisfied with its placement. 

Tabby lapsed into a sort of stunned silence and Erin continued working with the pump while Bane continued to listen. 

“Oh, I need you to be aware of a guy that could show up here some time,” Erin began as she mopped away a thin line of leaking blood. Erin proceeded to describe Dr. Matheus Cruz to Tabby. “He has an S shaped scar above his left collarbone,” Erin said as she began to stitch the incision closed. “He is also more dangerous than he appears.”

“I’ve seen the worst of the worse, I’ll be fine,” Tabby said with a thumbs up. 

“No, Tabby. This man is different,” Erin said, and Bane grew extremely interested to each syllable that followed Erin’s explanation of her statement. He listened with rapt single mindedness to Erin as she described the hormone cocktails that Matheus injected into her veins which was followed by psychological tests. 

Bane gritted his teeth as Erin described techniques that were often employed during unsanctioned military missions on foreign soil against hostile insurgents. “Oh well, that’s all in the past now,” Erin said as she shook her head and mind free of the very recent past and focused on stitching the rest of the skin closed. 

Tabby watched as Erin cleaned off each closed line of skin and applied a nearly opaque cream with a freshly latex gloved hand. “You’re really good at this,” Tabby said. “What made it a passion?”

Erin took a deep breath and closed her eyes as she recalled that day as though it was just a breath in the past. She spoke as she applied a clean dressing over each stitched line of skin. “The most memorable day of my entire medical career before it was abruptly ended was when I was a resident holding a brain tumor that had been excised from an overdose patient. It was the size of a walnut. 

“The patient had to have been taking so many drugs for what must have been the most agonizing headaches but was homeless and wasn’t able to afford or receive medical care,” she said as her eyes focused on her hands working automatically at securing the edges of the white cotton with paper tape. 

“That poor kid died right outside the hospital doors in a ditch. He wasn’t much older than you,” Erin added looking up at Tabby before continuing. 

“That was when I knew I wanted to help those that were suffering and pursued the additional pain management education. That kid overdosed from drugs he was buying from any jackass on the streets to deal with his untreated pain related to his at one point very operable tumor.” 

Tabby watched Erin turn back to the bandages and clean up all the dirty drapes and used suture packets. Tabby stripped off her gown and help open one of the plastic bags and helped Erin clear the trash off the surface of the bed and table being mindful of the sharp objects. 

Erin stripped her gloves and washed her hands before shifting some of the pillows away from Bane and sitting next to him on the bed. He feigned being slow in surfacing to reality and opened his eyes to have her intense scrutiny filled gaze upon him. 

“How do you feel? How’s your pain?”

“It is tolerable,” he managed in a tone she recognized as reeking of a lie. Erin shook her head and adjusted his IV line. The frown on his head dissipated by half as he visibly relaxed.   
“I’m going to let you rest for a while,” Erin whispered as she leaned over him and pressed a kiss to his forehead. “I’m also going to have a pot of coffee ready to brew,” she said before adding. “Sometimes really bad headaches occur following this procedure but drinking caffeine will help reduce it. Try and lie flat,” she said and along with Tabby helped position him on his back. Erin tucked the linen over him and dimmed the light next to the bed. 

As Bane recuperated following surgery in room #328 of the East End Hotel, Mayor Caroline Tobinsky continued with her commitment to rebuilding Gotham. As Bane’s body continued to heal and knit, Caroline was often on the phone with the new warden of Black Gate Prison. The old warden had regretfully been murdered by one of any number of inmates, she checked in daily on the status of the prison occupants and of anything she needed to be aware. 

During this time of rebirth and reinvention as Bane healed, he read the newspaper daily. He would often scoff out loud at some of the headlines and the progress towards the New Year’s Eve celebration. There had been no post-op infections and after the initial incisional pain had receded, the morphine did its job. 

Bane’s pain was nearly undetectable as the potent drug swam lazily through his body. Erin had added a few other magical medications that kept him from feeling like sleeping all day. 

Since Bane had a relatively lengthy recovery period, Erin was able to work on recreating the Venom serum for his mask from Dr. Cruz’s notes. Apparently, Matheus hadn’t recorded all of the components of the serum. For several weeks she experimented with varying narcotic cocktails and would have him inhale the analgesic through a vaporizer to test its physical and neurological effects. 

During her series of narcotic creations, Erin would continually write lists out for Tabby to take with her on her hospital self-proclaimed, “professional night.” Tabby would slowly weasel out the compounds Erin needed for Bane’s mask when she’d be in the hospital pharmacy in the chilly basement. 

Sometimes with a few of the concoctions, there would be an initial relief and surge of energy but often the only difference was various tastes he would breathe deep into his lungs.  
As Erin continued to marry heady inhalant drugs together, Bane was able to walk with greater ease and donned his mask as he culled together an ever-growing mass of followers. Mostly men joined up under his riveting speeches delivered in his musically melodic mechanical voice. 

Several weeks later across Gotham in the underground lab where he had seemed to find himself living, Dr. Matheus Cruz’s phone gave a shrill ring. He listened with a rush of satisfaction about a report of a couple that matched Bane and Erin’s description seen at a shitty hotel in the East End. 

Matheus couldn’t get into his car fast enough or get enough calls out for everyone to report to the East End immediately.

Tabby was hanging out in the lobby of the hotel on the uncharacteristically clear Saturday afternoon in the East End. She was painting her toenails a gaudy fluorescent orange and was planning on going to the rooftop and tanning for a while with her new bikini she had purchased. 

Tabby had completed her first week in cosmetology school and planned on reading her textbook after some time in the sun. Her heart stopped beating for a second when the hotel’s glass doors opened, and Dr. Matheus Cruz came into view. 

Tabby recognized him immediately from Erin’s description and she tried to stay casual as she stood up and began her well-practiced act when his dead and empty eyes found her. 

“Hey baby, you looking for a little fun?” she asked as she toyed with the strap of her tank top. 

“I’m looking for a woman,” Matheus said with a leer and added. “And a man.”

“Oh my,” Tabby said with a forced grin and winked. “I’m a woman.”

“A little thin, but yes that’d be an accurate statement,” Matheus said blandly and walked past her to the hotel’s desk.

Tabby tried to casually slide out of the room, but Matheus called to her. “Don’t go too far, I might need some company.”

She smiled and moved a bit closer into the room, but not much. 

“Good afternoon. I’m from Homeland Security and I need to ask you a few questions,” Matheus said as he flipped open a counterfeit badge and plastic-coated card that identified Matheus as Agent John Castellan. 

The sleazy inn keep looked up nervously at what he thought was an official badge and started babbling incoherent mutterings. 

“You’ll have to excuse him,” Tabby said as she sidled up to Matheus’s side. “He has a bit of a drinking problem,” she stage whispered.

Matheus nodded and looked over Tabby, he brushed a few strands of loose hair behind her ear. 

“Tell me. Have you seen a large man around here accompanied by a dark-haired woman?”

Tabby shook her head and gave him wide eyes, “not that I can specifically recall,” she started. “But this place has a lot of comings and goings, if ya know what I mean baby.”

Matheus narrowed his eyes at Tabby as the glass doors opened again and three of the technicians filed in. “Looks like they’re not here,” Matheus said to the new arrivals without   
taking his eyes from Tabby’s. 

Matheus backed away from Tabby and nodded at her as he departed. Tabby watched him go and let out a slow breath as she turned and skipped up the stairs to warn Erin and Bane. 

Tabby was not the smartest girl and Matheus had seen that, he had walked just far enough from her view and watched as she ran up the stairs. As soon as she was out of his sight, Matheus and his trio of techs burst back in through the hotel doors. 

Tabby froze as she neared the top of the stairs when she heard the doors crash open in the lobby, she heard Matheus’s deep and chilly tone from where she stood. 

She ran with all out abandon to the locked door of room #328 and pounded her small fists against it. Bane ripped open the door and she was babbling about Dr. Cruz in between gasps. There was a deep shout from downstairs and Tabby was rushing back to the lobby with the inn keep’s name on her lips. “Eddie?!?,” Tabby shouted, and Bane quickly followed.

Erin paused to grab a few sharp and deadly surgical implements before taking the stairs two at a time. She spilled into the lobby and her eyes first found the sleazy inn keep lying on his side with his face pressed to the filthy floor. Tabby was kneeling by Eddie’s side and Erin noted his labored breathing as one of the near to dead and his body tried to breathe past a sudden and violent spill of acidic vomit. 

“You are looking well Erin.”

Matheus’s voice pierced Erin’s conscious mind and she looked up to meet his eyes. 

“You motherfucker!” came Tabby’s voice as she launched herself at Matheus. 

Erin screamed for her to stop and then turned her attention to Bane and found him surrounded by the three techs she recognized from many trips to the frigidly cold examination rooms of the underground prison and laboratory. 

One of the tall and lanky techs that Erin remembered as being named Jeff or Jerry shot out his hand which was clutching one of syringes. That was the last and final mistake of his existence. Bane caught his wrist and pulled Jeremy’s or John’s body in close to his. The sickening crack of his spinal column was surprisingly loud amongst the chaos and Bane let the body fall, a now flaccid 180-pound bag of manure. 

Erin watched as the other two men made a united front and leapt at Bane, each man grabbed at an arm and tried to plunge their syringe deep into his bicep. Bane moved impossibly fast thanks to the reinvented Venom cocktail that Erin had concocted and soon had each man gripped by the soft flesh under their jaw.   
Bane tightened his grip and the men’s faces took on the becoming color of eggplants with their shiny and taut skin before he released their bodies. They fell to the floor with swollen tongues protruding through their puffy lips. 

Erin ripped her eyes back to Matheus who had forced a high-pitched scream from Tabby. 

Erin’s eyes found Matheus shoving a curved blade to the hilt inside of Tabby’s abdominal cavity.

Matheus pushed her to the floor and stepped over her. He waved the bloody blade still weeping with Tabby’s crimson blood through the air. 

Erin rushed forward to try and reach Tabby, she lashed out blindly with a scalpel she clutched in her hand. The wickedly sharp blade kissed along Matheus’s wrist and sliced deep through his radial artery and tendons. 

Matheus howled with pain as his hand dropped the dagger he had just pushed deep into Tabby’s tender flesh. 

Bane reached out and grasped her upper arm to pull her back from Matheus’s deadly embrace. “Help her,” he said as Tabby mewled on the ground, curled into a fetal position. 

Bane squatted and retrieved Matheus‘s fallen blade and raised to his full height. Matheus swallowed hard but kept any other reaction off his face as he clutched his bleeding wrist to his chest. 

Bane balanced the blade in his massive palm and fixed his full attention on Matheus. Bane moved too fast for Matheus to register as he swung the blade across his chest. The silk blend shirt was easily sliced through and the edges quickly started to turn a deep red from his flayed chest wound.

Matheus stumbled back and fell to his knees as he gripped his bleeding wrist and tried to staunch the bleeding of the now sudden red fissure running diagonally across his skinny chest. As he squeezed his wrist to try and stifle the blood flow, the fingers of his injured hand twitched spasmodically. 

Matheus looked up as Bane brought the blade in a downward arc towards his face. He squeezed his eyes shut as the curved blade opened up his cheek. The end of blade sliced completely through his cheek and clicked against his back molars as it was withdrawn. 

Matheus spit out a mouthful of blood that landed on the threadbare area rug with a wet sounding plop. He tried to crawl away from Bane as he let go of his injured wrist and tried to crawl with one shaking arm. Matheus only succeeded in falling forward on his face, his raw wrist chafing against the rough carpet fibers and he blubbered a cry of pain.

He felt Bane’s warm hand on his forehead pulling his head back. Matheus stopped struggling when he felt the blood-soaked blade press against the soft skin of his neck. Bane let the tip of the blade tease the skin above his rapidly beating carotid artery as Matheus’s breath turned ragged. 

“You will never hurt her again,” Bane whispered and sank the blade deep into his throat. He drew the blade across his neck, severing both his carotid and jugular. Bane kept applying pressure and the blade sank deeper until it was stopped by Matheus’s spinal column. 

Bane held Matheus’s head back a little while longer until the bleeding slowed, and his body stopped twitching. His breathing had gurgled and then gone silent. Bane removed his hand from Matheus’s clammy forehead and let the body flop to the floor. He wiped the blade clean on the leg of his pants and turned towards Erin as her hands moved over the exposed skin and wound of Tabby’s belly. 

Erin probed the wound and pressed her hand around Tabby’s belly, she pressed her blood-soaked fingertips to Tabby’s neck, desperate for a pulse. She looked over and locked eyes with Bane whose own hands were still dripping with freshly spilled viscera. A single solitary tear rolled down Erin’s cheek before a huge smile filled her lips. “She’s still here.” 

Thank you for reading, xoxo. I borrowed the immortal Sylvia Plath’s “Mad Girl’s Love Song,” for Bane’s dialogue.


	8. Happy First…. Last….. Best New Year

“She will live?” Bane asked as he stared down at Erin. Her hands were pressed firmly on Tabby’s belly, staunching the warm flow of the coppery, sticky blood.

“I need to get her upstairs and get the bleeding stopped,” Erin said calmly. She watched as Bane squatted down and scooped Tabby’s slim and bleeding body into his   
arms. Erin hurried to match his long strides and continued holding pressure as he carried Tabby upstairs to their room. 

Bane settled Tabby’s pale form onto the partially made bedcovers as blood threatened to pulse past Erin’s ungloved fingers. A familiar metallic scent began to fill her nose and mouth as Bane fetched everything she called out for.

Bane watched with rapt fascination as Erin had him switch places with her and use his larger hands to apply pressure as she cut away Tabby’s shirt. Erin didn’t bother with gloves since each line on the palm of her skin was already painted with Tabby’s blood. 

As Bane watched Erin’s hands move across Tabby’s open belly wound, he was transported back to watching the morphine addicted physician in Pena Dura. As a young man, he had often assisted the doctor in setting bones, suturing lacerations, and performing appendectomies and other general surgical procedures. 

As Bane continued to watch Erin work on finding all the internal spots that were spewing dark organ blood, his eyes looked past the ragged flesh of Tabby’s belly and back to a time in the bleak gloom of Pena Dura. One of the oldest men incarcerated there had assembled an inventory of novels with well creased spines, housing brittle and yellowed pages. 

Bane had spent a fair amount of time reading each book until some threatened to crumble under the weight of his eyes.

The sucking sound of Erin’s fingers probing Tabby’s belly pushed a painful memory to the front of his mind. Bane could suddenly smell the musty cells of Pena Dura and the dust that constantly lingered in the air. A group of men had entered the small room with the fragile paged books, murderous rage present in every one of their ragged nerve endings. 

Bane had leapt to his feet where he had been reading Tolstoy as the men had pushed the old man to the grimy floor. Bane had pulled a razor-sharp shank from the waistband of his threadbare pants and opened up one of the encroaching men’s throats before one of the others blindsided him and slammed a fist against his temple. 

When he had awoken a time later, his eyes had opened and focused first on the large pool of blood surrounding the old man. 

Bane had crawled to the old man and smelled the presence of death in the air before he saw the absence of life in the man’s withered features. Erin’s hands and wrists were covered in Tabby’s blood, her forearms were flecked with spots of blood, but she eventually stopped the bleeding.

As Erin began to close the wound, General Gables replaced his steel grey phone in its cradle at the monochromatically painted office at the Pentagon. Gables regarded the phone for several moments as he processed what he knew to be factual at the moment. He had made too many calls to count to Dr. Matheus Cruz that had gone unanswered along with every sent text, email, and fax. 

He pressed #7549 and waited as a few loud clicks confirmed a staticky connection. 

A harsh man answered on the fourth ring in broken Portuguese. “falar.” (“Speak.”)

“This is Gables, area 819 needs eyes.”

The gravelly voice barked a slew of Portuguese obscenities before laughing and adding. “Bah, estou muito ocupado aqui velho amigo. Chamada Carlos, ele está sempre olhando para limpar a merda dos outro.” (“Bah, I’m too busy here old friend. Call Carlos, he’s always looking to clean up other people’s shit.”)  
At his plain looking but expensively decorated office, Gables ground his teeth and opened a lower desk drawer to pull out a small bottle of smooth amber colored bourbon. He poured a generous amount into a squat square shaped glass as he tried a different approach. 

“I’ll call us even if you do this for me now.”

Gables waited and took a couple long swallows of the strong alcohol as his words seemed to hang in the dead air. 

“Olhos vão estar lá em 12 horas, estamos agora mesmo meu velho amigo.” (Eyes will be there in 12 hours; we are now even my old friend.”)

Gables suppressed the relieved sigh he wanted to issue and had to laugh as the man added. “Você ainda perfurando um cartão de tempo meu amigo? Você precisa vir aqui, eu vou dar-lhe o suficiente buceta e bebida para durar o resto de sua vida.” “You still punching a timecard my friend? You need to come down here, I'll give you enough pussy and booze to last the rest of your life.”

After his call ended with Gables, soldier of fortune Tiago G. made a call to another ex-military contact and relayed information about the location of the obscured prison laboratory in Gotham City. While the few contacted hard men loaded into a dark blue SUV and headed to a nearby airstrip, back at the rundown hotel in the East End, Erin and Bane moved Tabby to room #330. 

The room right next door was a little bigger and had a king size bed. Erin had asked Bane to keep his back turned before they moved Tabby so that she could give her a quick but thorough bed bath. Bane did as she asked and examined a stack of papers in front of him and heard Erin murmuring softly to Tabby’s unconscious body as she wrung excess water out of a dark brown washcloth and cleaned away the spilled and tacky drying blood. 

Erin had decided on moving Tabby to the room next door so that she would be able to keep a constant eye on her. As she had been closing the sutures across Tabby’s belly wound, Erin had told Bane that she’d like to be able to stay in the room next door with Tabby and watch her round the clock since the next 72 hours were critical for her survival. 

Bane agreed even though his face said otherwise. When Erin questioned his expression, he shook his head. He found that he couldn’t admit that he’d miss her body next to his at night. Erin was too consumed with caring for Tabby to press for the truth past his obvious omission and continued closing the wound as she asked him to gather a few supplies to take to the next room. 

Erin had shot a healthy dose of a light pink narcotic into Tabby’s veins to keep her nervous system relaxed and watched with a small smile as Bane assembled a makeshift IV pole from a curtain rod, roll of silver tape and a stray wire coat hanger that he had found in one of the empty, dusty closets.

Erin cradled Tabby’s head as Bane lifted her from the dirty bed linen and carried her to room #330. 

Bane watched as Erin shifted Tabby’s flaccid limbs around and asked him to help slide pillows under Tabby’s specific extremities. Erin sat back in the room’s matching paisley chair after she was satisfied with Tabby’s orientation on the bed and IV placement. 

She stifled a deep yawn and rubbed her eyes which had grown more reddened with each passing hour and offered Bane a weak but relieved smile. “Can you bring me a glass of water?” Erin asked with another yawn. 

Bane smiled behind his mask and filled a chipped coffee mug from the other room with tap water. Erin’s parched throat was grateful for the tepid water and closed her eyes as Bane leaned over her and pressed a kiss to her forehead. 

For the next week, Erin and Bane seemed to be living on different planes of existence. He found himself not needing very much sleep with the tweaks Erin had made with his Venom. Some nights the lights in room #328 never turned off as he examined blueprints, city employee personnel files and notes that the young man he had assigned to the hotel’s front desk after Eddie had been killed by Dr. Cruz. The sandy haired boy with the barbed wire tattoo around his neck had said his name was Kyle. Regardless of the untruth in his statement, he had excellent penmanship and took concise notes. 

Late at night Bane would sometimes hear Erin reading to Tabby as she recovered. After Tabby made it through the first week, Erin found herself unable to leave her side for long. She caught naps that she timed with Tabby’s narcotic injections, during the days Bane was often involved in meetings in one of the hotel’s abandoned   
dining areas.

Their intimacy waned even though they were not usually far from each other. Each night Erin and Bane’s thoughts were on the same wavelengths as their bodies missed each other’s. 

While Tabby’s body took its first small steps in the healing process, Erin reduced the amount of sedative narcotics so that Tabby could begin to swim to the surface of consciousness. 

“How do I look?” Tabby croaked one day as Erin brushed a few stray hairs off her forehead.

“Well, honestly? “Your makeup looks terrible,” Erin said with a grin and ran a damp washcloth over Tabby’s face before she rubbed a clear moisturizing balm across her lips. 

Tabby managed a slight glare before her face collapsed into a smile. She closed her eyes and leaned back against the stack of pillows Erin had arranged under her head and neck.

“I’d like to examine your belly,” Erin said and pulled the blankets off Tabby’s slender form after she nodded her consent. Erin pushed the thin nightshirt up and checked how the edges of the wound were healing, she was pleased to find no evidence of infection or any other abnormalities. 

“It’s looking good,” Erin said with a satisfied smile. 

“Tabby’s forehead creased with a frown when she saw the dark circles under Erin’s tired eyes. “How long since you’ve slept?” she asked in a stern parental tone. 

Erin thought a moment. “I haven’t been counting,” she said with a shrug.

While Tabby continued to heal, across the globe Selina and Bruce slipped into a pub to escape the rain. While Selina flicked a bit of foam from her glass at Bruce, her thoughts were finally starting to come to believe that Bane was truly well and dead. 

As Selina and everyone else kidded themselves, the men that Tiago had hired at Gables request had arrived at the prison laboratory and examined and scrutinized every nook, cranny, and document in the hidden facility. 

One of the hired militant thugs phoned Gables directly with the list that Cruz had made the day he died of places where Erin and Bane might be. Gables instructed the men to head to the multiple locations around the city of Gotham.

While the trio of professional murderers for hire split up and headed to the top places on the list, back in the East End hotel, Tabby was nearly feeling back to her regular self. She ran a wet brush over her nails leaving a slick line of candy apple red enamel across the surface of each filed toenail. 

As Tabby leaned closer to the surface of the chipped mirror, her breath momentarily fogged out her reflection. Her eyes slid to the right and the wall that separated her room from Bane and Erin’s when she heard Erin’s voice rise in volume through the plaster wall.

Tabby put down the brush and opened her door slowly to prevent any noise and tiptoed to the nearly closed door of room #328. She peered through the small crack at Erin and Bane. 

As Tabby was painting her nails, in the next room Erin had woken from a long overdue nap and rolled to her side with a satisfied stretch. 

“Sleep well?” Bane asked and glanced over at her as she sat up and smoothed her sleep mussed hair down. 

“Very,” she said with another deep stretch. She froze when his next words found her ears. 

“Since Tabby is nearly recovered and things are proceeding as planned, I need to have the flash drive now.”

“You never answered my question from before,” Erin rebutted quickly before adding. “Do you agree to tell me everything that you have planned?”

“You want to know everything?” he asked standing from the creaky upholstered chair. 

“Yes,” Erin said standing. “I want to know every part of your plan, I want to know what you discuss with those men in that room downstairs, what you read late at night at that desk,” she said with a flash of anger. 

“You believe you are deserving of this knowledge?” he asked letting his hands hang loosely at his side.

“Yes, I do goddamn it,” Erin practically spit and took a few steps towards him adding. “I got you out of that hellhole and away from the greedy clutches of tweedle dee   
and tweedle dumb fuck.”

Bane struggled to keep his composure and closed the remaining distance between them with barely two long strides. 

Erin took a deep breath and lifted her chin in staunch defiance that almost made it to her eyes. 

Bane stared down at her, feral danger radiated from his every pore and brushed against her skin. Erin steadily returned his gaze and was surprised when his next words were directed past her. 

“Tabby are you well enough to accompany me on a couple errands?” he asked and waited as Tabby slithered into the room with casual nonchalance. 

“Ya, I’m good,” she said airily. 

“I’ll be back soon with the truth doctor,” Bane said leaning down close to Erin’s face. He tried to keep his eyes hard but found himself distracted by the clean scent that emanated from her body. 

Erin watched with a perplexed frown as Bane gripped Tabby’s elbow and guided her from the room. “Do not leave this room,” he threw over his shoulder as he closed the door behind them. 

Erin watched the door for nearly a solid minute after Bane had exited with a firm grip on Tabby’s upper arm. 

She narrowed her eyes and glared at the paint chipped and dented surface of the door before moving into the bathroom. Erin squatted down in front of the sink and plucked the carefully wrapped flash drive from the coils of the copper pipes. 

She opened the tissue and squinted down at the small oblong plastic chip. Erin bit her lower lip as her thoughts whirled into an erratic storm. “I should destroy this,” she thought and pressed her lips into a thin line. 

“What truth will he be returning with?” Erin thought as she stood and closed her fist around the flash drive. She pushed the chip deep into one of the pockets of her loose cotton pants and turned the metal faucet of the sink and cupped her hands under the stream of cool water. 

Erin splashed the water on her face, droplets clung to her hairline as she patted the counter for a small folded washcloth. She patted her face dry with the rough cloth as her thoughts ran haywire throughout her mind. 

Erin left the bathroom and crossed the room to the low desk, she picked up a dark blue ink pen and absently drew circles on a pad of lined paper in an effort to slow down her erratic thought process. 

“A strong man nearly killed you and changed your life, did you forget about that? Are you also forgetting about those pigs who locked you in that clear cell?” her mind screamed at her.

“Bane is a strong man, but he won’t hurt me like those who now live under the earth,” Erin rebutted to herself. 

“You can’t know that as an irrefutable fact,” her mind replied so fast she nearly caused herself to flinch. 

“Yes, I can ,” Erin felt like saying aloud. “I don’t see that in his eyes when he looks at me.”

“He’s a goddamn mercenary, you have seen him take lives violently in front of you. He will continue to toy with you until he tortures and then breaks you. You read his file, think of what wasn‘t recorded?” her mind screeched.

As Erin’s mind continued to assault her with terrible thoughts of an unimaginable demise, Bane was pulling Tabby along the dusky light bathed streets of the East End. 

Before the two of them had exited the rundown hotel via the uneven concrete steps, Bane had pointed at a barrel-chested man who smoked unfiltered cigarettes down to nearly nothing. The chain smoker had been born to Irish immigrants and had dark haunting eyes and a delightful accented voice. 

Bane had gestured for the man who gave his name as Owen Collins to follow them. Owen dutifully followed the pair, lighting up another cigarette as they all walked down the pitted sidewalks in the East End. 

“Not so fast,” Tabby whined as she struggled to keep up with Bane’s pace in her ridiculously tall spiked heels. 

“You shouldn’t wear such frivolous footwear,” Bane growled in a low tone but released his grip on her arm and slowed his pace by half. 

“That’s better,” Tabby mumbled as she brushed her hair away from her forehead. She fell silent as she followed Bane to a dark doorway at the end of a filthy alleyway. 

Tabby watched and unconsciously slid closer to Bane’s side as she heard a glass bottle shatter against the ground somewhere nearby. He looked down and suppressed his laugh at her sudden closeness. 

Bane passed her a rectangular tan envelope before the steel grey door opened. “Follow what is written inside to the exact specifications. I will catch up to you shortly,” 

Bane said as he released the envelope to her pale hands with their wickedly red fingernails. 

Bane then turned his attention towards Owen who had hung back in the shadows. “Let no harm come to this one.”

After Owen nodded his resolute confirmation, Bane walked through the darkened doorway and disappeared from view when the door slammed shut.

Owen’s eyes slid over to Tabby as they both heard the bolt of a lock slide securely into place. “Shall we?” he asked grandly as she peeked into the thick envelope and pulled out a scrap of paper with Bane’s cramped but neat writing. 

Tabby’s eyes widened as she read the note and then turned her gaze back to the envelope’s contents. “This place isn’t too far from here,” she said with a smile. 

While Tabby scuttled off with Owen to run Bane’s pricey errand, her thoughts grew happier with each passing block. Tabby had noticed the wiry Irishmen as soon as she had recovered enough to be able to descend the stairs on her own to get some fresh air.

As Tabby and Owen made their way to a plain glass storefront that was lit with a wan yellow light from within. This store known to few, housed objects, and baubles from every region of the vast globe. Ancient and novelty antiquities lined dusty wooden shelves, but Tabby walked past all of them towards the craggy shopkeeper sitting on a low padded stool.

As Tabby passed a substantial stack of cash to the older woman who ran the shop on a schedule that correlated with the very phases of the moon, back behind the slammed door, Bane’s eyes quickly adjusted to the low light of the room and a familiar man sitting at a slick surfaced card table. 

Bane scanned the room and eventually sat down across from the man on a grey metal folding chair. 

The man sitting across from Bane leaned back in his matching metal chair and crossed his arms over his colorfully tattooed chest. His skin was creased with lines from too much exposure to sun while mowing down villages of men, women and children for money, diamonds or just out of boredom. 

“It’s been a long-time brother,” the man finally said as his lips pulled into a rare and unusual albeit still frightful grin. 

“Lukas,” Bane said with the barest trace of warmth in his tone. “I need the box of records,” he added and watched as Lukas’s eyebrows raised minutely. 

Lukas wordlessly pushed away from the table and disappeared through a curtained doorway. He returned a short time later with a scuffed and dented metal latched box. 

Bane let his palm rest on the cool metal surface of the locked box. Lukas dropped a rounded key on the table and watched Bane pick it up and shove in into the pocket of his olive-green cargo pants before he scooped up the metal box and tucked it under his arm. 

“Stay well brother,” Bane said and left Lukas to his thoughts in the dim room. 

As Tabby and Owen left the store that the haggard woman owned. She killed the sickly yellow lights as soon as they exited, triple locking the door behind them.   
The trio met up a short time later a few blocks from the hotel. Tabby passed Bane the pricey purchase and he who scrutinized it for so long that she grew worried that she had made a critical and possibly fatal mistake. 

After what seemed like a stagnant amount of time had passed, Bane’s eyes caught Tabby’s wide and unblinking ones. With the mask obscuring the majority of his features, she still caught the tell-tale sign of approval that danced in his eyes. 

Tabby watched as Bane tucked the new acquisition into his inner coat pocket and then passed her a few folded bills. “What’s this for?” she asked with a tilt of her head.   
Bane’s half-smile was hidden from view when he spoke. “The good doctor and I have a great deal to discuss and you have a recovery to celebrate.” He hadn’t missed any of the shared glances and flirty exchanges between Owen and Tabby.

“Alright,” Tabby said with a lazy smile and turned towards Owen. “You wanna go get a drink with me?”

Owen glanced over at Bane who gave the barest of nods of his consent. 

As Bane watched Owen and Tabby cross the street in the direction of one of her favorite bars, back in room #328 of the hotel Erin paused in her doodling and looked down at the pad of paper. 

Erin shook her head as she stared down at her random ink pen doodles as Bane returned to the hotel and stopped at the desk in the lobby. 

Bane picked up his daily report from the youthful looking Kyle before he ascended the stairs. He paused again in the hallway, a few doors down from room #328. He fished the key from his pocket and shifted the metal box until he could force the key into the lock and turned it until the top sprung open. 

Bane sifted through the contents before closing the lid and walking the rest of the way to the room he shared with Erin. 

When Erin heard the sound of the door opening, she crumbled up the note and shoved it into her other pants pocket. 

Erin stood from the shabby chair and leaned back against the edge of the desk; she loosely crossed her arms low across her abdomen as Bane deposited the metal box on the unmade bedcovers. 

“What is that?” Erin asked as her eyes zeroed in on the metal corners and her mind gave birth to a million answers to that question.

“It’s simply the truth, my dear, doctor,” Bane answered in a low tone as he stepped away from the bed and leaned against the wall before adding. “You may ask for clarifications on anything in that box and I will answer you.” 

“You’ll answer anything?” she asked with somewhat disbelief.

“Yes.”

Erin shrugged and pushed out a low sigh and approached the bed with the metal box and its unknown yet strangely intriguing contents.   
Erin held her breath as she traced her fingertips along the mottled paint on the box’s lid. She brushed her thumb across the metal latch and lifted the lid with a touch of hesitation hobbling her progress. 

Erin eyes darted around in her orbital sockets as she focused on the first sheet of paper on top of a messy stack of yellowed and curled edged newspaper articles. 

She ran her eyes over the paper that was signed by a high-ranking government official, skimming just a few of the key words. 

“Bosnia…Operation Draconian….Libya….regime…termination.”

Erin set the paper to the side of the metal tomb and couldn’t hide the expressions that flooded across her features when her eyes set upon a fanned-out collection of eight by ten photographs. 

“Is this my fate someday?” she asked in a dry tone and held up a grainy black and white photo. 

Bane glanced briefly at the matte photo that showed a set of young twin teenage girls that had been grossly violated and gratuitously dismembered. Their crudely machete removed extremities had been fashioned into a peace sign. Bane spared the photo less than a second of attention before his gaze returned to her eyes.

“No.”

“Did you rape any of these or other women?” Erin asked as she turned the photos over and set them on the edge of the bed. 

“No, there is a certain repugnance in that act.”

Erin avoided his gaze as she picked up a few pages that were stapled together. She frowned and tried to understand the number of reported acceptable losses for a certain South African job that Bane had been hired to perform. 

“How many of these reported deaths were at your hands?” she asked and held up the papers. Bane stepped away from the wall and looked at the sizeable number she was pointing at. 

“More than half,” he said in a low tone and stood by the side of the bed as she couldn’t believe her math was right. 

Bane sat and slowly let his weight settle on the end of the mattress as she added the paper to the growing stack of reviewed items. 

“What will the loss of life numbers look like if I give you that flash drive?” Erin asked, careful to not brush her hand over the pocket that was housing it. 

“There will be at least seven zeroes in the death count doctor,” Bane said after a short pause. “But you will never be one,” he said and added. “You’re necessary.”

“You killed that Dr. Pavel, I read it in your file. I guess at least it was quick, but wasn’t he necessary?” Erin asked with an edge to her words before dropping the paper she was holding and began to pace back and forth. 

Bane watched in silence as she continued to speak without ever once raising her voice.

“You wouldn’t have hurt him too much because you needed him to prime that bomb. You wouldn’t have let him become dehydrated or malnourished because that could affect his cognitive and neurological processes and potentially be disastrous for your plans. The same could be said with not depriving him of sleep or anything that would cause his nerves to completely shatter,” Erin added as she stopped pacing and met his gaze as her lips twisted into a wry grin. 

“Am I a different kind of necessary?” she asked in a dry tone. 

“Yes doctor, you are a different kind,” Bane answered before casually requesting. “Please look through the rest.”

As Erin worked her way through more of the box’s contents, across the city Mayor Caroline Tobinsky ended her conversation with a patisserie who would be catering the desserts for Gotham’s New Year’s extravaganza. 

As Caroline made a note on her calendar about the hefty deposit she had made for the delicious bites of decadent treats, the men dispatched to trace down the locations on Dr. Cruz’s list were all coming up empty handed. 

The men’s communication skills were limited to enhanced interrogative techniques. The dangerous men stayed in contact and slowly moved through neighborhoods in search of Bane and Erin, who had become property of the government.

Back in room #328, Erin continued to sort through communication between billionaires who were looking to off and extract information from other billionaire executives. Bane watched as she neared the bottom of the metal crypt that stored part of his sordid past.

Erin lifted another stack of photos, these ones she was thankful to see featured dead insurgents and no one who appeared to be a civilian. Her gratitude moved to the back burner and her breath caught in her throat, when the next sight was a square burgundy velvet box staring up at her from the bottom of the metal tomb.   
Bane’s eyes went to her face as her mind processed a myriad of thoughts. 

Erin tentatively reached for the small smooth box, she settled it in her palm before returning his searching gaze.

A surprised smile tugged at the corners of her lips when she opened the hinged burgundy jewelry box and her eyes found the antique platinum ring with the Cathedral cut diamond.

Across the Atlantic Ocean, Selina snapped a few photos of the Russian countryside as Bruce watched on. She focused the camera lens on a cluster of chamomiles as Bruce’s voice found her. 

“That’s the national flower of Russia,” he called from where he leaned against their zippy rented BMW. 

Selina smiled from behind the camera as she snapped a couple more photographs. As she shifted the lens to include a clump of wispy ivory colored baby’s breath, back in Gotham, Tabby ordered another round of drinks and pulled Owen out onto the bar’s crowded dance floor. 

In a gutter right outside the rundown hotel in the East End, a stray front page of Gotham’s newspaper stuck to the cracked cement announced the mayor’s New Year’s Celebration was just weeks away.

Upstairs in room #328, Erin stared down in unashamed awe at the antique ring that gleamed dully under the overhead lights. 

“This is quite a ring, it’s a lot,” she said entranced by the sharp lines of the brilliant diamond nestled in its platinum bed. 

“When I liberated John Daggett, he offered this up as a bribe,” Bane started and stood up from the edge of the bed and took slow steps towards her. 

“Daggett bought this ring at a private auction many years ago,” Bane said in a soft, melodic tone as he pulled the ring from her hand. 

“This ring used to belong to one of the lovely Romanov daughters,” he whispered as he slipped it onto her left ring finger. 

Erin swallowed hard as she stared down at her ring finger which had always been naked. It now wore a ring that belonged to a once powerful and then brutally   
murdered family.

“Besides doctor,” he added in his mechanical tone. “You were never paid for your work. I imagine your fee would be quite steep doctor for every medical service you’ve performed.”

Erin laughed and flicked her eyes up to meet his before returning to the magnificent ring that seemed to weigh down her finger. 

“Well if insurance companies are still fighting tooth and nail for any reimbursement and their rates have remained status quo then I might not ever see this much money at any one time. I think all of us in the medical field have a special place in their heart for private pay patients around the holidays or vacation saving time.” 

“First do not harm,” she thought as Bane stood just close enough to make a promising warmth spread throughout her lower body. 

“When did my moral compass break?” she thought as she tore her admiring gaze from the ring and up to meet his eyes. 

“Okay,” Erin said as she dug her right hand into her pants pocket. 

“Okay?” Bane parroted as she pulled the flash drive out of her pocket and handed it to him.

“Okay,” she confirmed and shook her head at what she hoped was not a poor choice to gamble.

Bane felt a rush of shock couple with confusion at how quickly she handed over the chip. He had a fleeting sense that reality could shift, and his future could be drastically different than he had ever imagined. 

“Shake on it?” she asked in a coy tone. 

“I imagine that there’s something better than a handshake,” he said as he closed the remaining distance between them. Erin allowed him to pull her into his arms. She slipped her hands up the front of his shirt and exposed his abdomen and chest. 

Erin giggled as she pressed her face against his chest, the hard skin of his nipple hard under her nose. 

“Hmmmm?” he mumbled. 

“I’d nearly forgotten how warm you are,” she said and gently pressed her lips over his heart. 

As Bane pulled Erin down to the surface of the bed, Tabby and Owen continued to alternate between drinks and dancing. 

Bane slipped out of the bed a time later without disturbing Erin. He pulled on a pair of olive-green cargo pants and slipped the flash drive into the inexpensive laptop that one of his minions had delivered to him. 

Bane clicked the mouse over a few files and opened up the chemical information for Hydroxiginphencyclidethyl. 

His eyes scanned the typed chemical equations and the physical and neurological effects of the inhalant. 

“Respiratory distress…...severe internal hemorrhaging….90% mortality rate.”

Bane shifted his attention to a stack of rolled blueprints and unrolled one of downtown Gotham. He made a few marks where the New Year’s celebration would be centralized.

Erin continued to sleep soundly as Bane called a chemist in Norway who agreed for an obscene amount of money to fly out that night on a private plane that Bane would also foot the bill for. The chemist was known in the field for having out of the box and borderline crazy ideas. He ended the call after confirming a pickup time from Gotham’s airport the following day. 

Before the call ended with Dr. Alexander Berdhel, Bane noticed the corner of a piece of paper peeking out of Erin’s pants pocket that were arranged messily on the floor. 

He leaned over and plucked the crumbled note from her pocket, he unfolded the paper and read her loopy lettered writing. 

As Bane’s mind processed her written words, further south in the Pentagon, Gables hung up the phone with the three murderers for hire. They informed him that they were working a grid in Gotham and would eventually find Bane and Erin. 

Gables hung up with not much to add since they would eventually turn over the correct stone and find the two misplaced government toys. 

While Gables sat in the Oval Office and lied through his coffee stained teeth that there was anything amiss, Selina and Bruce passed a lazy day out on a yacht and absorbed more UV rays than most likely necessary. 

“Where to from here?” Bruce asked as he steered through the water and all the eye could see was the glorious horizon. 

“Anywhere,” she called from where she was sipping a strong mojito and watched Bruce climb down a ladder and join her on the polished deck. She passed him a drink as he pulled her close. 

He pulled a coin from a leather seat cushion and tossed it in the air. “Heads, we go to Japan. Tails, we check out Australia and then New Zealand,” Bruce said. 

Selina just nodded as the silver turned loops in the air. As the coin prepared to land, Bane read and reread the words that Erin had written and then crumpled up. 

“Can you trust him? Can you give him your heart?”

Bane looked up at Erin’s sleeping form as Tabby and Owen stumbled out of the bar and spilled into the damp streets. 

Tabby laughed and would have tripped if Owen hadn’t caught her around the waist. Her smile turned coy and he pulled her up in his arms and kissed her. As Owen and 

Tabby hands moved across each other bodies, over in City Hall, Mayor Caroline Tobinsky placed another call to the caterer. 

She had a plethora of messages from the catering company about a change in their already discussed and agreed upon prices. 

As Caroline left another message, Bane pulled the flash drive from the laptop and taped it to the underside of one of the desk drawers.

Over the next several weeks, each passing day was more to accomplish for many before the ringing in of the new year. 

The weather on New Year’s Day started off with an inspiring sunrise and brisk morning breeze. People whose lives would end at the stroke of midnight were moving about their daily lives. There was last minute shopping for forgotten ingredients for BBQ’s or not enough booze and ice. 

While the celestial bodies slept and the moon was still hidden from Gotham’s view, the sun shone high overhead. Mayor Tobinsky was happy to see the clear skies on   
her morning jog. She mumbled her Taoist mantra as she ran. 

Caroline returned home invigorated and ready to bring the greatest and most memorable New Year’s celebration to the citizens of Gotham City. 

As she was untying her shoes, she had no idea that the best morning jog of her life had also been her last.

As Caroline pulled one of her nicest suits from the depths of her closet, across Gotham in the East End hotel Erin sipped her coffee as she looked over the newspaper headlines. 

Over the past several weeks Erin had been working tirelessly in converting the upper floors to a medical clinic and operating suite.

Tabby was helping her build up her medical inventory. Now that Tabby was sharing a room with Owen at the end of the same floor as Erin and Bane but on the other side of the hall, she didn’t have to use her body to acquire medical supplies and pharmaceuticals.

Tabby now had cash and other illicitly earned commodities to help her ascertain whatever she or Erin needed. 

The morning of New Year’s found Bane edgy with the thought of razing Gotham down to its filthy foundation. Erin could feel his energy coming off of him in waves as she sat across with him working on her second cup of coffee and picking at her blueberry scone. 

Erin was reading an article about a city council dispute when Bane’s words found her ears. 

“I need your word that you’ll stay here tonight. If you’re concerned with Tabitha, I’d suggest she stay with you.” 

Erin let the paper droop as she stared at him. “Do you really need to do this tonight?”

“Yes,” Bane replied evenly. She had already known the answer.

Erin had listened at the door several times as Bane discussed the poison gas and its delivery system with the Norwegian chemist. 

Erin haphazardly folded the section of newspaper she had been reading and excused herself to use the bathroom. Bane watched her disappear from view and heard the   
faucets turn on. He stood and knocked at the partially closed door and listened as the faucets flow of water was cut off. 

“Yeah?” she called from inside the bathroom.

“May I came in?” Bane asked as he pushed the door open. 

“I guess you’re already in,” she said and looked over at him from where she had been ready to brush her teeth. 

Erin watched as he continued towards her and stopped only when he was standing directly behind her. She looked at their mirrored reflection with some sense of wonderment at how much he towered over and around her. 

Her breath caught in her throat and she nearly dropped her blue handled plastic toothbrush when he pushed her against the edge of the sink and started to hike her robe up her legs. She shivered when the fabric brushed past her knees, kissed the sides of her thighs, and finally settled around her hips.

Erin gasped when his hands came in contact with her bare skin and she heard him fumble at his zipper. “You need to say you’ll stay here,” he stated as he wound a hand into her hair and tightened his grip until he pulled her neck into a long, thin line. 

Erin felt her body tingle and twitch in anticipation of his touch as he pressed his free palm against her lower back until he could move closer to her naked body. Bane urged her to spread her legs further apart, exposing her body first to his gaze and eventual touch.

“Say it,” he ordered as he freed his straining cock and pushed himself into her body, keeping his grip in her hair firm. She gasped and tried to nod in confirmation as his cock filled her and brought her to the brink of orgasm as she tried to form words.

“Swear it,” he said in a musically solemn tone as he moved his hand from her lower back to cover her left hand. Bane closed his eyes and pushed into Erin as he felt the diamond ring press into his scarred palm.

“I swear,” Erin gasped as Bane was able to purge a fair amount of the tension he was carrying. “I swear,” she groaned as her orgasm caught her off guard and left her thighs trembling in its wake.

As Bane and Erin each came back down to earth, the three men contracted to seek them out were nearing the East End on their search grid. In the past several weeks, they had searched in obscure places and began to hear rumors about a masked man and his pet surgeon. 

As the men regrouped at a greasy spoon diner to go over the search agenda for the day, back in room #328, Erin headed down to Tabby’s room after she had taken a shower and cleaned up. Erin knocked sharply and heard Tabby giggling as she approached the door.

Tabby peeked around the door, her bare shoulders and exposed upper chest a clue as to what else she wasn’t wearing behind the door. 

Erin suppressed a broad smile. “Don’t make any plans for tonight,” she said and held up a menu to a nearby Taqueria that Tabby adored. “I was thinking you stop by tonight and we can eat way too nachos and watch TV.”

Tabby’s face pulled into a disappointing frown, “I thought I’d check out the party downtown. Free food and music,” she added quickly.

Erin shook her head, “do you trust me Tabitha?”

“Of course,” Tabby said.

“Then please trust me now when I say that you need to stay with me tonight or that free food will more than likely be your last meal.” 

Tabby nodded and looked over her shoulder at something Owen mumbled to her. She looked back at Erin with a healthy blush painted across her features. 

“You’re busy,” Erin said covering her big smile. “I’ll see you later tonight,” she said and returned to room #328 to find she had it to herself.

As Erin paced the empty room for a while, and finally started to nervously clean. She was dusting with an old cloth as Bane was downstairs in the lobby with a stack of blueprints outlining each organized cell’s mode and method of attack. Each man took careful note of each word that the ferocious masked man spoke in his chilling tone.


	9. The Stew from my Childhood

While Bane handed out marching orders to men from every walk of life, upstairs Tabby knocked on room #328. Erin was glad for the company and let Tabby and Owen inside the clean room. 

“Do you know how the poison is being delivered?” Erin directed in an abrupt tone towards Owen. He averted his eyes before speaking. “No.”

“No?” Erin asked skeptically. 

“I’m not involved with that part,” Owen said in hesitating halts. 

“Hmmm, well where will I find that Norwegian doctor?”

Erin hadn’t seen much of Dr. Berdhel since his arrival. Bane kept him somewhere offsite but secure.

“He left,” Owen said without sharing her gaze. 

“He left before the big show?” Erin scoffed and shook her head and added in a tone that held zero amusement. “Where is he?”

“I don’t know,” Owen finally said, and Erin was irritated to see that he was actually telling the truth. 

“Okay fine. Where are you supposed to be tonight when all hell breaks loose?”

“Outside the door,” he answered in a quick and matter of fact tone. 

While Erin considered all that Owen had said, downstairs in the lobby Bane finished his litany to the departing army of men as they spread like a plague throughout   
Gotham. He watched as they dispersed from all exits of the hotel and began to make Bane’s plans come to life.

As each heavily armed man advanced towards downtown Gotham City, each step was closer to Bane’s master plan’s arteries fill with destruction coupled with the severe loss of life and limb. 

While Bane picked up a creased brown grocery bag and ascended the stairs towards room #328, a refurbished GCPD Swat truck was filled with large tanks of compressed H.O.P.E. and in route to the downtown streets that would host Mayor Tobinsky’s New Year’s extravaganza. 

Each metal tank was painted a deep forest green, some sported minor dents, and imperfections but appearances mattered not. Inside every metal cylinder was an equal amount of death and destruction. 

Hydroxiginphencyclidethyl caused internal chaos, pink and fleshy lungs would begin to struggle to hold onto their breath. The esophagus would spasm and flutter and a bluish cast would come over gasping lips, sucking like a fish out in the open air.

As people struggled to take in even the most minute gasps of air through their strangulated air passages, their internal organs would begin to lose their mass through small tears seeping various colored fluids. 

The pathologists would later discover upon autopsy that many of the bloated abdomens were full of black blood that had started to coagulate and that the bowels had turned into a soft mush. One thrice divorced pathologist, Dr. Sanderson was wading with latex gloved fingertips through one gaping maw of a midsection and found dark chunks of the cadaver’s liver poking up in a pool of brilliant green bile. He thought of the stew he had been served as a child that had large uneven chunks of purple potatoes alongside stringy pieces of venison.

Erin looked over at the door when it opened and couldn’t stop the smile that came to her lips. 

Bane’s eyes found hers a moment later and she let her gaze travel the length of his body. Only when she ended at the steel reinforced toes of his boots did Erin remember that Tabby and Owen were still sitting in the room. 

Erin shook her head at her own girlish silliness and busied her hands at smoothing down her sleeves and taking too long to button them at the wrists. 

Bane smiled behind his mask at her intoxicating attraction and reached into the depths of the paper bag and extracted a military issued biohazard level four mask to protect against toxic inhalants and poisons. 

Erin caught the mask he tossed towards her. “These feel expensive,” she said as she hefted their weight between her hands.

“That they are doctor,” he said in a voice that held twinkling amusement before he tossed a couple pliable Kevlar based masks to Tabby and Owen.

Bane watched Erin slip on the mask and helped her adjust the durable straps. After he was satisfied with its placement, he took a step back and asked. “How does that feel?”

“Will the poison reach us here?” Erin asked with a muffled voice from the supposedly impenetrable government approved seals that pressed flush against her skin. 

“Most likely not, but I would not risk you for anything,” Bane said as he brushed a lock of hair back behind her ear. 

He traced a few rough fingertips along her jaw line and paused as his eyes slid over to Tabby and Owen. 

“This would be a good time for you two to pick up dinner and anything else you might want to imbibe. Do not leave this hotel after the sun sets,” he said and turned his full attention back to Erin’s gun metal grey masked face. 

Tabby giggled and left with Owen. As soon as Bane heard the door shut, he gripped the bottom of the military issued mask and pushed it up and off Erin’s face. Bane set the life-saving mask on the paper cluttered desktop and followed by removing his own. 

Erin watched in silence as delicious anticipation swept through her body in a slow, warm wave. She smiled at the two masks lying side by side. A gasp tumbled from her lips when Bane’s hands were suddenly on her waist and sliding up the back of her blouse. His touch pulled shivers from her body as his calloused fingertips flew up the bare skin over the length of her spine. 

Bane looked down at her face and saw a certain troublesome cloud fill her eyes. He paused in tracing his hands along her skin, “what is troubling you doctor?”

“That chemist, Dr. Berdhel. Where is he now?”

Bane didn’t hesitate for even a millisecond before answering. “He’s dead.”

“How did he die?” Erin asked, certain that she already knew the answer. 

“By my hand.”

“Just like that?” she asked fighting her body’s urge to touch him. 

“Yes.” Bane wasn’t sure of her question as he added. “He had served his purpose and was no longer necessary.”

“He was a doctor and was valuable at one point. Just like me,” Erin added as she looked up at him under a fringe of dark eyelashes.

“He was nothing like you,” Bane said with a near jovial laugh.

“How so?”

Bane’s laughter tapered off as he saw a spark of fear in her large eyes, he didn’t want that to develop into a roaring brushfire. He spoke quickly as his hands moved with renewed urgency in pulling her blouse open and pushing it off her body. 

“I didn’t love him.” 

“Swear you will return to me,” Erin demanded fumbling at his belted cargo pants. 

Bane’s hands served as a nonverbal answer as his fingertips returned to her flushed skin. He coaxed a moan to escape her lips as his palms moved across her bare flesh.

“I swear it,” Bane whispered as he pushed her pants down her hips. The fabric soundlessly skimmed her thighs and pooled around her ankles as Bane pulled her down to the surface of the bed.

“I’ll return shortly into the new year,” Bane whispered against her ear as his hands smoothed down her bare thighs. His warm palms rested briefly on the naked skin of her knees before allowing his fingertips to dance along the bare flesh of her inner thighs. 

“I’ll keep some champagne on ice. You’ll also owe me,” Erin said in a laugh that tapered off into an unintelligible low moan. 

“And what shall I owe you doctor?” Bane chuckled as he gently pushed her thighs apart and insinuated himself against her exposed vulnerability. 

“A New Year’s kiss,” Erin whispered against the side of his neck as he freed his straining cock from the zipper’s confine. 

“Of course,” Bane said with a slight chuckle as he entwined his large hands in her hair and guided her lips to his. 

As Erin softly kissed his scarred forehead and bridge of his nose, in downtown Gotham City Mayor Caroline Tobinsky was arguing with one of the lead caterers about their gratuitous use of micro cilantro. The two alpha females finally came to an agreement of sorts and shook hands before stiffly parting company.

Caroline glanced down at her watch and counted a little less than eight hours before the start of the brand-new year. She didn’t realize as she smiled down at the face of her new designer watch that twelve seconds into the New Year, she would be dead. 

As Caroline headed to the makeshift tents that were currently serving as kitchens, the trio of soldiers of fortune and mercenaries met up in person to decide their next plan of action. The well-paid government men looked down at a map of Gotham City and the location of the East End with the newest deluge of anonymous tips.  
One of the empty-eyed men made an encrypted call to the Pentagon and relayed their location and where they were headed to next to Gables.

Back in room #328 of the East End hotel Bane broke their kiss and spoke in a labored whisper. “Swear you will be here when I return.”

His words swirled in her mind and she tasted the delicious vulnerability behind each of his spoken syllables. 

“I’ll be waiting right here,” Erin whispered in a few hitched breaths. Bane’s fingertips teased along the delicate folds of her femininity and he smiled as they grew slicker under his touch.

Bane kissed her flushed forehead as he guided his cock into her wet opening. Erin slid her arms up and around his neck and pressed their bare chests together. 

Bane pushed into her until their bodies kissed and stilled in his motion. He looked down at her face, fully sheathed into her body.

“Right here?” he asked with a strained voice. 

Erin nodded and locked her ankles behind his back and pulled him a few centimeters closer. “Right here,” she repeated as he slowly began to move in out of her hot,   
wet center. 

Bane held his shoulders rigid as he increased his momentum and settled into a titillating rhythm as he brought her body to the cusp of ecstasy. When he felt her internal intimacy begin to clench and tighten around his thrusting cock, he pushed his hips forward and dropped a hand to where their bodies met. 

Bane traced the rough pad of his thumb along her clit until her thighs trembled under his touch and she fell into the wishing well of orgasmic bliss. Erin pressed her lips to the naked skin above his heart and mumbled his name as she rode out the electric rush that swept throughout her body. 

Bane let himself succumb to his body’s wants and needs when he felt Erin’s hot exhalations on his skin. 

A little while later, Tabby knocked loudly and announced her returned presence from the other side of the door. She walked in, followed by Owen who was holding two pink plastic bags of take-out chow-mien and various egg roll appetizers with sweet and savory dipping sauces. Tabby had a board game tucked under her arm and nodded at Bane as she set her purse on the shabby desk. 

Erin sat on the edge of the bed and watched Bane leave, he looked back at her and they shared a glance. 

“See you later,” Erin said and accepted a Styrofoam tray from Tabby. 

Bane nodded and closed the door behind him. He descended the stairs and sat shotgun as Barsad drove a paneled van towards the Gotham City New Year’s extravaganza. He clenched and unclenched his hands, nervous energy coursed through his body. 

Bane headed towards downtown Gotham where Mayor Tobinsky was running around, consumed with hectic excitement. She had a fantastic view of the stage where she had dipped heavily into the city’s reserve fund to fly in a new popular singer. She frowned when she couldn’t remember his name, she snapped her fingers as her mind   
worked on remembering the young singer. 

As Caroline’s mind tried to pull the performer’s name from her memory, Bane’s men strategically located throughout downtown Gotham began to enact their orders. 

The anonymous men loaded the poison filled metal tanks to the underside of the stage in place of the tanks for the fog machine. The young singer who looked like his balls haven’t dropped yet would perish along with tens of thousands of Gothamites. 

As Tabby spelled out a seventy-two-point word with a triple letter, the debauched trio of well-paid men headed in the direction of the East End hotel. As dusk began to fall the men drove their grey sedan down the streets of Gotham. 

In room #328, Tabby squealed and recorded her points with a black pen. She frowned and whined, “I really wanted to go to the show downtown.”

“Who’s singing?” Erin asked as she squinted at her lettered tiles and then the board. 

Tabby said the young singer’s name and Erin looked at her blankly. Tabby was unaware of Erin’s missing time in the real world. “Ya know,” Tabby said and mimicked one of the popular bubble gum songs before she added. “That skinny little boy with Jesus tattoos and peach fuzz.”

Tabby continued singing and a giggle escaped Erin when Owen pulled a bottle of red wax topped bourbon from one of the pastel colored plastic bags. As he poured three generous glasses of the amber alcohol, the trio of men navigated their grey sedan through the streets of the East End, closer to the hotel.

The men drove slowly by shadowed alleys as the musical flavor of the moment took the stage and bee-bopped around for a bit to the screaming fans. Caroline was thrilled to see the money flowing back into Gotham’s economy for the overpriced rentals, advertising, and all-around news coverage. 

Caroline watched the show for a while and tried to pretend to know the lyrics as the electrical system was engaged for the fog machines. 

A short time before midnight, the fog machine plastic on/off switch was depressed. An average looking index finger with a ragged cuticle and bluntly cut nail laid flat for half a second against the aquamarine plastic button.

“10,” yelled the fad laden singer.

Caroline’s confidence swelled when a longtime rival patted her on the shoulder and congratulated her for a “fine job on the festivities.” 

“9,” yelled the enthusiastic crowd of Gothamites as the fog machine plastic lines began to fill with the opaque mist. 

“8,” screamed the latest blonde trophy wife of one of Gotham’s most prominent judges.

“7.” 

As the crowd grew more excited and ready to throw confetti in the air, the three dangerous men parked the steel grey sedan down the street from the East End hotel. 

“6.” 

As the faint wisps of fog began to appear from the holes in the mesh metal black lacquered stage, Bane watched from a nearby building as the crowd milled about in complete ignorance. 

“All of them are followers,” he thought as his eyes tracked the movement of the soon to be expired citizens of Gotham. The sons, daughters, and heirs of perpetual corruption.

“5,” the young singer led the crowd to shouting as Erin knocked back a shot of the bourbon which made a hot path down her throat and spread a soothing warmth throughout her chest and belly. 

“4.” 

Tabby, Owen, and Erin held their breaths as the clock winded down to the new year and Caroline was ready to drink from her plastic flute of champagne. The trio in room #328 slipped on their government issued gas masks as death loomed near for the Gothamites on their feet and roaring lustily.

“3.” 

The deadly fog began to swirl up and around the leather pants encased thighs of the performer and his musical accoutrements as life for the moment was happy for most and full of resolutions to stick to for more than two months. 

“2.”

An eerie smile twisted itself across Bane’s lips as the well-downloaded performer began to cough uncontrollable as his lungs and esophagus began to spasm. 

“1.” 

As the deadly poison sold under the name, “H.O.P.E.” began to caress the pink linings of the Gothamite partygoers’ lungs, the close to always fatal gas constricted throats and began to stop the breathing process of most everyone within the immediate vicinity. 

As Caroline Tobinsky crashed heavily to her knees, her hands came up to claw at her throat and a thin trickle of blood appeared at her right nostril. As Caroline struggled to breathe, back at the East End hotel, a few gunshots rang out in the lobby. 

As the first double-digit seconds of the new year passed by, Caroline succumbed to cardiac arrest. Her hand twitched open one last time and released the plastic champagne flute it had been clutching. The pale bubbly contents sloshed over the clear, plastic rim and splashed down upon the dark asphalt.

Bane watched from nearby as thousands of Gothamite’s lives snuffed out lightning fast with deep inhalations of the Hydroxiginphencyclidethyl. He observed the mist spread over the newly dead bodies and continue to move across the rest of the tightly packed crowd who were just starting to panic and stampede like cattle.

Bane chuckled at the disorganization of the Gothamite sheep, milling about in cyclical chaos. His chuckle filled his broad chest as he watched the perpetual confusion that settled among the panicking cattle that were passing as men these days. 

Bane shook his head at the pathetic wastes of flesh scatter and stumble over each other, sacks of hot fluid not worth the skin they were printed on. Behind his mask, he smiled as the first phase of his plan was unfolding before his shining eyes in the dying and undulating limbs of the soon to be dead citizens. The dull glow of narcotics made his vision dull around the edges but heightened his other senses. 

He crossed his arms over his massive chest and continued to watch lives fall under the odorless and tasteless H.O.P.E. and her fatal kiss. 

An anonymous soldier brought a maroon cell phone to Bane and stated it was an emergency from a woman named Erin. 

Bane brought the phone to his ear and immediately heard a heavy amount of fear in Erin’s voice. 

“There were gunshots below us, in the lobby.”

Bane let out a slow controlled breath. “There is a metal case under the bed with several automatic weapons and a few extra magazines.”

He heard Erin relay his message to Owen and then a small victory cry from Tabby at the sight of the glorious titanium weapons cache. 

“Okay, got’em,” Erin said and then added in a soft whisper. “Can you please come back? Now?”

“I’m on my way,” Bane could hardly say fast enough as he started running to a fire engine red motorcycle. Before he started the engine, he tried to offer her some helpful advice to distract himself from his growing fear for her life.

“If they come within shooting range, aim for the head or the heart doctor.”

“I imagine both are equally preferable,” Erin tried to reply in a light tone, but her voice began to crack on the last few syllables. 

“When this is over, will you go down to the courthouse with me and get married?” Bane asked as he slipped the key into the bike’s ignition. 

“Yes,” Erin answered with zero hesitation in a brief but stronger tone.

“I’m coming to you now,” Bane stated and pulled on a helmet and turned the phone to speaker. He tucked it in his collar and hoped it stayed in place as he yanked hard on the throttle. Little flecks of dust and chips of asphalt spit out from the tire after the drastic acceleration.

As the speedometer on Bane’s motorcycle climbed, back in room #328 of the East End hotel, all Erin could hear on the other end of the phone was a dull white noise. 

Tabby passed Erin a locked and loaded automatic weapon and then accepted her own from Owen. 

“Do we have a plan?” Tabby asked in a nervous stammer.

“Kill anything that moves,” Owen said quickly and checked the magazine of his gun before slamming it into place. The delicious and satisfying click of a loaded gun sounded for just a split second in the air. 

“Should we get behind the desk or move the mattress? Bathtub?” Erin asked quickly aiming the barrel of the gun on the room’s flimsy door. 

“Bathtub would be good, you two go in there,” Owen said as he pushed and lowered the desk to the floor. “Go,” he said forcefully when the girl’s remained standing where they were. 

Tabby reluctantly walked into the bathroom with Erin as Owen laid the mattress across the front of the desk and crouched behind it. He whispered “go,” as Tabby hesitated and looked back. 

Erin and Tabby pushed the tub on its side. Erin was quick to notice that Tabby didn’t do very much lifting. It also dawned on her that Tabby hadn’t put much effort into working much the last couple weeks. 

“Are you okay,” Erin asked as they crouched behind the porcelain tub. 

“Yeah, kinda,” Tabby said without returning Erin’s gaze.

“Oh, come on,” Erin said. “Please distract me with anything.”

“I missed a few of my pills awhile back and I’m a little late,” Tabby admitted sheepishly.

“Have you taken a test yet?”

“I bought one this morning when I went to get a decaf tea and the paper. It’s still in the back of the closet in a shoebox.” 

“Will a congrats be in order or do you need some help?” Erin asked as she strained her ears to hear any approaching adversaries. 

“A congrats. Owen has been talking about a family since day one,” Tabby added with a snicker. 

Erin’s smile quickly dissolved into a frown and transformed her body into a frozen fear-filled posture when another couple gunshots sounded in what she figured was the landing at the top of the stairs. She strained her ears as a few sharp voices in an abrupt, foreign tongue shouted to each other. 

Tabby and Erin jumped each time a loud thump sounded a couple floors beneath them. “They’re looking in each room, they’re going to question people who will direct them here,” Erin said in a quiet tone. 

“Anything that moves,” Tabby said as she thought of her lower belly which might carry fragile new life. 

“Head or heart,” Erin said in agreement and readied herself as the thuds from room’s being kicked in, moved up to the second floor. 

As the armed trio in room #328 waited for a frontal assault, Bane pushed the motorcycle harder and would not let his mind imagine a future without his fiancé. 

As the dangerous men finished up their search of the second floor and ascended to the third, across the globe in Australia, Selina and Bruce were sitting enjoying a glass of wine when a breaking news report mentioned a mass casualty incident in Gotham City. The news anchor gratuitously over-used the word “terrorist,” and similar variations. Bruce immediately made an encrypted call to Lucius Fox who informed him of the demise of nearly half a million total lives and counting.   
Selina’s features grew still as she listened to Bruce’s side of the conversation and his facial expressions shift at Fox’s answers. 

When Bruce ended the call, Selina had a million questions all struggling to be asked first. Bruce stood and spoke before she could launch an interrogative litany. “No group has claimed responsibility yet for the slaughter.”

“It has to be Bane,” Selina said standing. “We have to get to Gotham now.”

“Bane is dead, this could only be an impersonator.”

“What did Fox say? Any signature left at the scene?”

“Just one,” Bruce reluctantly admitted. 

“What was it?”

“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting’, was sent to the Mayor’s phone as well as every other attendee of the New Year’s celebration,” Bruce answered before adding. “The message was sent from a disposable cell phone. Fox is seeing if he can trace the phone to its original point of purchase and access any security video.”

“And yes,” Bruce added before Selina could repeat herself. “We fly out of here in two hours, that’s the soonest with fueling and diagnostic check time for the Leer.”  
Selina nodded, satisfied that they were leaving that day. 

The two hours passed by at an agonizingly slow snail’s pace for Selina. She had packed with speedy efficiency and sipped on another cup of coffee sweetened with sugar as she waited with Bruce at the busy international airport.

Bruce had paid heavily to squeeze his private jet into the flight rotation and tried not to entertain Selina’s thoughts even existing on the plane of reality. 

As Selina and Bruce boarded the sleek jet and faced a long flight before they had to stop and refuel, back in the East End hotel the armed trio of men approached the door to room #328. Each man held a various automatic weapon they ensured were loaded before the lead man kicked open the door. His hackles of aggression immediately rose when he saw the desk fortress.


	10. Until Then

The anonymous government funded employee proceeded further into the room and was soon flanked by his two deadly companions. Erin and Tabby each held their breaths as they heard the lightest of footfalls as the men advanced in their Kevlar coated boots.

“Should we stand and shoot?” Tabby mouthed at Erin. 

Erin shrugged and silently replied. “Count of three?”

Tabby nodded and crossed herself as she met Erin’s gaze.

“One,” she mouthed.

“Two.”

“Three,” she whispered as her and Tabby rose to their feet and began shooting in the direction of the three men. Owen heard their erratic shooting and began to discharge his own firearm. 

The three men were trapped in a gauntlet as the three automatic weapons rained down upon them with large caliber hollow point bullets. 

The dangerous man on the far left found death quickly, when a rapidly moving bullet found one of his deep green eyes. The metal bullet casing penetrated through his lens and devoured his ocular nerves before it blew a large hole in the back of his skull upon its violently bloody exit. 

The other two men dove to the ground and found cover as the lead man caught a bullet through his bicep. He lifted his own weapon and fired in the direction of the overturned bathtub. 

Tabby screamed as the bullets pinged off the ceramic bottom of the tub and began to cause large, spreading cracks to form in the organized look of spider webs.

Owen crouched down and depressed the trigger and riddled the other solider of fortune’s body with high powered rounds. The lead man returned fire in Owen’s direction. 

Owen gave a low yell as a bullet hit and shattered his clavicle. The shocked nerve endings caused his fingertips to spasm as the pain only rose in intensity. He dropped back behind cover as Erin angled her firearm over the tub without exposing her body. She fired erratically and only hit the walls and the headboard. 

“What do we do now? Owen’s hurt,” Tabby asked in a voice that was filled with anxiety. 

“We need to kill that guy, now,” Erin answered with a small amount of confidence. Her thoughts went to Bane, “he’s on his way. You need to stay alive until then.” Her thoughts had grown only more darker when the phone connection was lost, and she was left with only a dial tone. 

As the solitary mercenary reloaded, Bane grew ever closer, the motorcycle protesting the constant acceleration and urge to go even faster.

Behind the bathtub, Erin and Tabby whispered a plan for the both of them to aim and shoot over the top of the ceramic side of the tub. The two women each depressed their triggers until the guns clicked empty. 

They both returned to a rigid crouch and held their breaths, straining their ears for the slightest sound from imminent danger in the form of a mortal man.

Erin counted to sixty before she decided to gamble and risk a look around the slowly deteriorating tub. 

Tabby screamed in guttural shock and anger with an aftershock of fear for her life when Erin flew back after a bullet hotly entered her side. 

Tabby felt tears burning her eyes as she grabbed and reloaded both guns and started shooting over the top of the tub. Her fear was soon washed over by numbing shock as she stood and kept shooting the man repeatedly. 

Tabby advanced upon the man and filled his body to near capacity with the lead hollow points even after he ceased to be alive anymore. 

“Goddamn you,” she shouted at the ruined and wet corpse as she ran around the desk and dropped to Owen’s side. A few relieved tears leaked from the corners of her eyes when she found him still breathing, conscious and not at risk from the possibility of encroaching death.

Tabby grabbed a stray bath towel from the floor, one that Erin had used earlier to dry her hair. She pressed the damp towel to Owen’s shoulder before kissing him lightly as she hurried to check on Erin. 

“Be right back baby.”

Tabby nearly froze when all her eyes could initially find was blood and pale skin. She ripped a fresh towel from the wooden bar and pressed it against Erin’s side. She was afraid to push aside the fabric and see the actual wound that was forcing so much blood from Erin’s body.

“Tell me what to do, don’t you pass out on me!” Tabby shouted in a panicked tone as she urged the thirsty towel to consume and stop the flowing blood from Erin’s belly. 

Erin coughed weakly and laid a hand over Tabby’s. “Keep holding pressure, elevate my feet.”

Tabby arranged herself so that she could hold pressure and lay Erin’s legs over her own and keep them somewhat elevated. 

“Erin, look at me. Talk to me, please,” Tabby pleaded when Erin’s eyes started to roll back in her head. 

Erin shook her head and found a small amount of focus despite the pain that ebbed and flowed in intensity from her middle. 

“Bane will be here soon. He’ll be able to help, please stay awake until then,” Tabby pleaded as she felt the towel slowly become saturated with the warm spill of blood.

Erin attempted a nod and stared at the ceiling. “Have you thought of any names for the baby, if there is one?” she asked weakly. 

Tabby laughed despite the current circumstances. “Clara or Holden,” she said nervously afraid of any potential criticism. 

“I don’t know anyone by either….bold but…… traditional,” Erin managed between spikes in her level of pain. 

Tabby winced every time Erin stifled a gasp from pain. “Are there any drugs nearby that I can give you?”

Erin thought a moment and shook her head weakly. “No….oth...other room in de…desk dr…draw….drawer.” 

“You can use this.”

Erin felt a lift and spike in her awareness at the sound of Bane’s voice from the doorway. She slid her eyes to the right and watched him through blurred vision as he approached loosening and sliding off his metallic mask. 

“I probably shouldn’t, I don’t know how that might affect my speech. One or both of you are going to have to stitch me up,” Erin said and then gave a low groan as a wave of pain washed across her belly.

Bane gently lifted the back of her hair and slid his mask over her face. It was too large, but she instantly tasted the narcotic as it entered her nose and coated the inside of her mouth.

“Breathe deep doctor. Then tell me how to help you,” Bane said softly as he reached out and grasped her left hand. He squeezed her hand in his massive grip, he could feel the chilly ring on her finger and the startling icy quality of her skin. 

Erin took a few shallow breaths and felt the narcotic rush into her body. Her eyes dilated under the powerful stranglehold of the drug and her pain instantly belonged to the past. 

She closed her eyes and slid her free hand under the towel and palpated her fingers along her wound to feel the extent of the bullet’s damage. 

Erin’s pain was nonexistent, and she managed something that might have been a smile when she felt far less close to death upon examination. 

She breathed in a lungful of the delicious drug and gave Bane a laundry list of supplies that were almost all in the same location. He squeezed her hand briefly before he ran for the supplies.

Bane returned and Tabby lifted the towel from Erin’s abdomen, she was relieved to see the bleeding had receded to a still steady but slower flow.

Tabby looked away when Bane pushed Erin’s shirt out of the way and exposed her bloody abdomen. He looked down and narrowed his eyes at her belly and for the next few hours followed Erin’s verbal instructions.

Erin drew in intermittent deep breaths of the aerosol as Bane worked on removing the bullet, stopping the bleeding, and closing up her belly. 

When Bane had successfully stopped the bleeding, his inner anxiety level abated somewhat, and he could breathe easier. 

After Erin was out of imminent danger, Tabby went to Owen’s side and parroted Bane’s actions against Owen’s shoulder. She had described Owen’s injury to Erin as Bane stitched silently and waited as Erin gave instructions in between deep narcotic inhalations. 

After Tabby left, Bane finished up stitching her skin closed and left her side only long enough to crank the faucet to hot before he soaked and wrung out a clean washcloth. He thoroughly cleaned her side and waited until he was taping the thick white gauze in place before he spoke. 

“So, when you’re all recovered, you’re still going to become my wife?”

“Yes,” she said sleepily and smiled at him. “But I want to amend the setting.”

“How so?”

“It’s silly, I know. But I’d like a somewhat traditional marriage.”

“Would you?” Bane asked in an unreadable tone as he finished securing the squares of gauze.

“Yeah,” she said with a lazy smile. “I only plan on getting married once and I want it to be beautiful.” 

Bane closed his hand over hers and lifted it to his lips. He pressed a kiss to the top of her hand and smiled down at her. “You can plan anything you‘d like.”

Erin smiled and closed her eyes as Bane lifted her from the floor, he settled her frightfully chilly body in his arms and made his way from the room which was in chaotic disarray. 

“Tabitha?” Bane called.

“Yeah,” Tabby called as she cleaned blood from Owen’s skin. 

“I’m taking Erin next door; do you need anything?”

“Nah, I’m good. I think I’ve got things under control,” came her response. 

Bane left with Erin in his strong arms and proceeded to the room next door. Erin mumbled in his arms under the heavy grip of the narcotic inhalant. He whispered to her as he settled her on top of the bed and pulled off the rest of her blood-soaked clothing. 

Erin kept a few extra clothes in the rickety bureau, and he dressed her in a fresh pair of flannel pajamas. 

Bane buttoned the long sleeved top and settled her under the bed linen.

He laid the back of his hand on her cold and clammy forehead and a frown appeared between his eyes. 

Bane walked around to the other side of the bed and stripped down to a pair of royal blue boxer briefs. 

“You’re too cold,” he whispered as he slid under the bed covers and aligned her body along the length of his. 

Erin stirred at his close presence and warm press of his body. She murmured something unintelligible as he brushed her hair back from her cool forehead. 

“Sleep, my dear doctor,” Bane whispered to her and held her in his strong embrace. 

Time passed as Selina and Bruce returned from Australia. As soon as they landed, Bruce was on the phone with Lucius Fox and Jim Gordon. 

Soon Selina and Bruce traveled to meet with Gordon, Blake, and Fox while Homeland Security conducted its own investigation in Gotham. The news stations had constant coverage of the Commander-in-Chief reiterating his no-negotiation policy with terrorists. 

Within 24 hours of Erin’s unexpected belly wound, Bane had moved her, Tabitha, and Owen to an abandoned bomb shelter. Bane had discovered the underground bunker while perusing the dusty stacks of Gotham’s historical records and early geography. He had enlisted a group of men to solely work on restoring and making the shelter functional again without drawing too much attention to the construction and labor site. 

The faithful men had impersonated a Gotham city work crew and staged road work on a nearby intersection. They essentially ended up breaking through the asphalt and digging a large hole while a few men stood around and watched while they intermittently scratched their balls. Then they waited a bit and pretended to look busy as they completed the work on the well-camouflaged bomb shelter. 

When the work was complete, they then filled the hole in the street back in and repaved the surface as they spit brown tobacco juice on the ground. 

Back at the Pentagon, it didn’t take long for Gables to assume that the trio of highly paid men were dead. He made several calls and ended one by stating acceptable loss was expected and not relevant in order to recapture Bane. 

Gables sent a group of ex-black op, now soldiers of fortune, on an unsanctioned government mission with a high mortality rate. 

The five dangerous men left their hovels in various parts of the globe as they headed towards Gotham City on red-eye flights. 

Gotham City had been swarmed with FBI agents, Homeland Security and U.S. Marshalls. Bane was able to monitor a lot of activity in Gotham throughout various sleeper cells, hidden recording and listening devices that had been placed with deliberate hands. 

Back in the underground bunker, Tabby and Bane watched American Red Cross workers milling about in makeshift stark white tents attending to survivors. The television monitors showed downtown Gotham with long rows of beige zippered body bags in the stage of being identified. Tabby was sipping on a decaffeinated cup of jasmine tea and had to unloosen the top button of her jeans with her just beginning to expand belly. 

The morning after Owen and Erin had been shot, Tabby had left the hotel for her usual tea and pastry breakfast and to pick up the newspaper. She had purchased another overpriced stick to pee on and squealed when she saw two pink lines form. 

As Bane and Tabby watched the monitors, Owen and Erin were on the steady path to healthy recuperation. There were two full-sized mattresses covered in simple cotton sheets, Owen was stretched out on one and Erin on the other. 

As Erin lightly napped on her side, sort of fluttering in the space between wakefulness and sleep, her thoughts were stuck in the past. Behind her closed eyes, she examined and scrutinized the events that had led up to the present breath she took. 

As Erin was transported back to the last surgery she had performed in the sterile operating room suite number five in Gotham General, Owen was deeply asleep and nestled in a bed of warm and fluffy happiness. He was going to be a father and there was nothing better in his mind than that. 

On the other mattress, Erin could vividly recall everything about the last day of her freedom before her kidnapping and subsequent incarceration. She frowned as her mind rapidly replayed a summary of her years of invasive physical and psychological abuse, torture, and immoral medical experimentation.

That day had started much like any other for Erin. She rose before dawn and was greeted by the sound of her already percolating coffee pot. She always thought one of the best inventions was automatic timers for coffee pots. That and being able to fast forward through commercials with overpriced cable and television service subscriptions. 

Erin had gotten out of the house at her usual time. She had knotted her wet hair into a tight bun at the base of her neck and grabbed her plastic lunchbox out of the fridge. She hated wasting money on the cafeteria’s convenient but often sub-par food. 

She had just bought the new lunchbox which featured a certain grumpy grouchy green guy living in a trash can on one of the arguably most iconic “streets” in the world. Erin’s last lunchbox had featured a trio of princesses and was light pink with hints of hot pink, all on a background of glittery pink. 

Her drive to the hospital was uneventful and nothing remarkable had been spoken on talk radio or played musically. Erin had parked in one of the reserved parking spots in the keycard entry only.

“Reserved Doctor’s Parking Only.” 

Under the bold writing was printed in smaller font. “Violators will be towed.”

Erin had greeted one of the night shift techs as he played a fish game on his smart phone. 

“How was the night?”

“We worked from seven straight through to just after four, this is the first chance I’ve had to sit.” Jared yawned and stretch deeply. He groaned as he looked down at his watch, he had an eight am lecture. 

“How’re the nursing classes going?” Erin asked as she slipped on her white long-sleeved coat and gathered the charts for her morning rounds. She started reviewing and making some preliminary notes as Jared lamented his lack of sleep but somehow managed to get a B+ average on his recent mid-terms. 

“How long till you graduate?” Erin took a long sip of her cooling, artificially sweetened coffee.

“Three months, two days,” Jared said with another yawn. 

Erin pulled a creased five-dollar bill from her coat pocket and passed it to Jared who gave her a quizzical look. “Go grab a coffee and a muffin or something before your next class.” 

“Thanks doc, you know you’re my favorite,” Jared added in a mock whisper.

“You only like me for my money,” Erin said in a haughty Joan Crawford impersonation. “I’ll see you tomorrow?” she asked as she drank the rest of her coffee and prepared to do her first rounds of the day. 

Jared nodded and slipped the bill in his pocket. He had half an hour before he was relieved, the money would just have to burn a hole in his pocket until then.

They exchanged a little more small talk until Erin left and worked through her stack of charts. She made a few notes at each buzzing and busily growing nursing stations in between each patient. 

After her fifth patient, she gave a small yawn and rubbed a knot out of her right shoulder. She went down to the cafeteria and bought a soy latte with some fake sugary vanilla syrup from an independently owned coffee and smoothie kiosk. 

After Erin had paid and dropped her change into the plastic tip jar before she climbed the stairs at a brisk pace to the fifth floor where she had two orthopedic post-operative patients to see. 

After Erin had examined and chatted with her last patient, she swore softly when she saw a patient’s name, she had somehow skipped over on the third floor. She shook her head and blew out a sharp breath, her bladder had started to scream at her and she had nearly crossed her legs as she was seeing her last patient. 

Erin set her coffee cup on an available bare space on the nursing station counter and practically ran to the unisex bathroom with the flickering overhead fluorescent lighting. She washed her hands and was retrieving her coffee cup when she heard muffled sounds from behind a curtained bed in a single occupant room to her right.   
Erin looked over and saw an empty gurney parked outside the room with a single pillow and small stack of crisp, white linen. She approached the room with her files and coffee cup in hand when a partially stifled shriek of pain sounded from behind the soft lavender privacy curtains. 

“This is Dr. Gibson, is everything okay in there? Do you need any assistance?”

“No, thank you doctor. We’re fine. Just changing an NG tube.” 

Erin frowned at the unfamiliar voice and went back to the nursing station to look up the patient in room #519. 

Her eyes skimmed over the admission information of a middle-aged man who had presented with a broken hip and underwent a hip pinning surgery. Erin read that the patient’s surgery went well and that he was steadily recovering at a both normal and expected rate. 

She frowned when she saw no mention of an NG tube or anything that would indicate the medical need for one. Erin dropped her charts on the counter and abandoned her coffee as she ran to the patient’s room and ripped open the pastel colored privacy curtains.

Any sound Erin tried to make was squelched when the man she would later learn was Doctor Matheus Cruz spun towards her and somehow managed to near simultaneously pull the curtains closed and prevent any sound from spilling past her lips.

“Quiet doctor,” Matheus hissed in her ear and Erin focused past him to see another man she would later learn was Doctor Erik Gottlieb injecting a full syringe of a lime green liquid into the patient’s IV line. 

Erin struggled in Dr. Cruz’s arms as the male patient’s body began to convulse on the bed. 

“Settle down doctor,” Dr. Cruz hissed, and Erin shook her head around and forced a shout from Matheus when she bit one of his fingers. The breath left her body when Matheus shoved his knee deep in her solar plexus. Erin dropped to her knees as Erik approached her and filled a fresh syringe with a milky liquid from a squat glass vial. She recognized the substance as the intra-operative drug propofol. It was fondly referred to by anesthesiologists as “milk of amnesia.” 

“She looks healthy. Let’s bring her with this one, cross your fingers that she’s fertile,” Erik said as he gripped her chin and scrutinized her features. “Attractive enough, she might make a good specimen for Project Europa.”

“Get…...your….. goddamn hands……off me,” Erin managed and earned a sharp slap across the face. 

Erik knelt down in front of her and delivered a stinging slap to the other side of her face before she felt the cold needle penetrate her body. A short time later her conscious world faded, and she disappeared down a narcotic rabbit hole. 

As Erin’s mind replayed her fist days of waking up in the clear, plexi-glass prison cell, across Gotham, Selina, Bruce, Gordon, and Blake all met along with Fox’s brilliant mind and expensive gadgets to try and trace the source behind the genocide. Selina was certain Bane was responsible whereas Bruce was tirelessly trying to convince her it was a copycat sociopath.


	11. The Thirteenth Orphan

As time passed, the strike team descended upon Gotham while back at the bomb shelter, Tabby’s belly continued to expand, her rush of hormones caused her skin to redden and break out with a fresh crop of acne. Erin kept insisting that she still looked quite lovely and flashed a thumbs up as she added with a wink. “Your tits have gotten a lot bigger and you look really good in that shirt.” 

Tabby smiled and gave a sexy pose as she went to sit with Owen where he was rubbing an antibiotic ointment along his healing wound. 

Unbeknownst to Bruce, Selina, Gordon, Blake, and Fox, they were missing so much that was existing right under their noses. When Blake had initially discovered the plans of the explosive laced concrete pour sites, he had only stumbled across the mere tip of the veritable iceberg. 

The entire Gotham City Police Department and official city offices had all been rigged to blow upon remote detonation. The entirety of the buildings along the downtown streets were included in the path of the planted plastic explosives. 

At the bomb shelter Bane turned the detonation device over in his large hand. He looked over at Erin’s profile as she sat giggling with Tabby. He felt an unfamiliar sensation wash over him as he watched her. Bane found himself enjoying seeing her happy and free of her frequent frowns and varying but usually serious expressions.

The tightness at the corners of her eyes and lips had all but disappeared. Her and Tabby were sitting on one of the mattresses and Erin was rubbing Tabby’s swollen feet and ankles. Bane allowed his mind to entertain the fantasy of finding an ordained minister, throwing a black bag over his head, and bringing him down there. He wanted desperately to have her, know she was his, that she would speak a set of marital vows only to him.

Erin felt his gaze and looked over at him and saw the need visible in his eyes and the underlying passion and dangerous intrigue. She blushed severely and went back to rubbing Tabby’s feet as she flushed a becoming shade of fuchsia.

Later that night as Erin slept with the aid of an oval blue pill pain pill, Bane silently slipped off the bed and climbed up the ladder of the shelter and cracked open the lid. The surveillance cameras showed nothing in the immediate vicinity, nor did any of the motion detectors light up with anything other than an occasional rabbit or other small nocturnal critter. 

Bane made a call to the leader of a sleeper cell positioned in a high rise downtown, masquerading as a couple who sat on Gotham’s City Council. The minion who answered the phone was surprised when after Bane identified himself, he asked to speak to the female member of the cell who was posing as one of Gotham’s highfalutin socialite wives. 

Bane had a conversation with the woman and made her repeat back all of his instructions. He didn’t end the call until he was satisfied with her level of comprehension. 

As the woman went over the list she made upon Bane’s detailed and painfully specific instructions, in the East End the black ops paid mercenaries easily found the hotel Bane and Erin had recently occupied. They arrived there from the last GPS check-in of the other paid and now very dead, bloated, decomposing men.

The vacant eyed men found the fallen bodies in room #328. Bane had left the militant men nailed to the wall in an effigy of sorts. He had taken the time to leave a message on the wall in the deep red arterial blood that had begun to pool in the bodies lower limbs and discolor the flesh in a brilliant display of scarlet lividity.

The well paid, empty staring men called Gables at the Pentagon and relayed the message that was painted on the wall in the bloody yet elegant print.

“And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?” 

The next couple days, the deadly men continued to look for any trace of Bane and Erin. There was little doubt that they were together. While the men sought clues in dark alleys and answers were revealed only under extreme duress and fractured bones, Bruce and the others stayed constantly occupied assembling a team to work under the radar of Homeland Security and the FBI. 

Another night came to a close as Bane sent a couple men to pick up what he had asked the female masquerading minion to acquire and purchase. A newly named first lieutenant met Bane at an abandoned stockyard and delivered the paper and plastic bags.

When Bane returned with the bountiful acquisitions, Erin’s curiosity was aroused, and she peppered him with questions about the contents of the bags. 

“They’re for you.”

Erin’s side was healing well, and she started to unwrap the packages as Tabby watched on with anticipation, her hands cradling her lower belly. She already knew what the bags held from several lengthy conversations between herself and Bane. 

Erin felt her mouth fall open as she pulled several different styles of wedding gowns that Tabby said would be flattering on Erin’s shape and with her skin tone. There were shoes and veils of varying lengths. She was surprised to find even a solitary pair of sheer nylons at the bottom of a brown paper bag. 

As Erin struggled to find the words to lift away the frozen state from her vocal cords, Bane’s phone chimed from his inner jacket pocket. He fished it out and listened for a minute before ending the call. 

Erin saw his features morph into a place of dangerous tranquility. 

“Is everything okay?” she asked as she held up a pair of teal blue panties and raised an eyebrow over at Tabby.

“Something blue,” Tabby mumbled around a mouthful of frosted cereal flakes and sugary marshmallows. 

“Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle were spotted downtown. It seems that have returned to be the saviors of the city,” Bane answered before returning his attention to his phone and dialing a long phone number before leaving the bunker after checking for clear monitors. 

Tabby and Erin watched him leave and it seemed he returned in no time flat. 

He began addressing Erin, Tabby and Owen as he descended the ladder back into the bunker after securing the hatch lid. 

“A cargo ship will be leaving in the early morning hours and head down to Miami. All of you will be on it tonight and an armed escort will be here to drive you there.”

“What about you?” Erin asked as she set the minimal panties aside. 

“I will meet you there when I have razed Gotham to the ground and crucified the vermin.”

“I won’t go without you,” Erin rebutted stubbornly, Bane’s expression softened for a moment. “I swear I will return to your side. I need to know that you are safely away from here,” he added but his thoughts continued long after he stopped speaking. “I will not marry her now and risk making her a widow.”

Erin lapsed into silence and started packing resignedly with Tabby and Owen. The armed escort arrived right in the window of time that Bane had dictated, Tabby and Owen loaded into the moving van.

Bane caught Erin’s elbow after her few pieces of luggage had been loaded. “I will take you down to the dock later myself,” he said in a gentle tone against her ear. 

Bane told the driver that he would bring Erin down later and to wait until then. The driver had forged papers that said the cargo was official and already signed off and clear for departure.

Tabby blew Erin a kiss and said she’d see her soon. Bane and Erin disappeared back into the underground bunker, alone for the first time in quite a long stretch of time. 

Bane could feel the tension and worry rolling off of Erin in waves as he crossed the room and pulled her into his powerful embrace. His eyes slid past her to a shabby desk’s meticulously organized surface and the stack of medical charts she had taken when they’d escaped the clear jail cells.

He narrowed his eyes at the top beige file folder that detailed Erin’s time in the clear underground cells. He couldn’t help his hands from tightening on her body as he recalled rereading her file the previous night for the umpteenth time. 

“Who’s Alex Gibson?” Bane growled and shifted his hands until he could grip her upper arms and squeeze until he had her full attention.

Whaaa?” Erin started to say before Bane released her arms and stomped heavily to the desk and retrieved the file, spilling the others to rain their papers all over the floor. He spun back towards her and held up her liberated medical chart.

“Who. Is. Alex. Gibson?” he repeated in an empty tone and held the well-thumbed chart towards her. 

Bane watched as the color drained from Erin’s face as she held out her hand for the file folder. 

His fury grew darker as she silently leafed through the file until her eyes landed on a black and white photo of a man very much devoid of life who was photographed broken and mangled at a rock quarry.

“Who is he doctor?” Bane asked with his control waning. He felt his hands curl into fists as he read about the dead man wearing a wedding ring and having the same mailing address as Dr. Erin Gibson. 

Erin mumbled incoherently under her breath as she closed the file. 

“Please repeat yourself doctor.”

“I said,” she started and blew out a long breath before continuing. “He was my brother.”

Bane felt his anger fall away as though he was a popped balloon the size and capacity of The Hindenburg. 

“Your brother?”

Erin nodded and tossed the file folder on one of the unoccupied beds. She stifled a groan at the twisting motion on her upper body and laid a hand over her still internally healing wound before she continued. “His wife left him, it was a messy divorce, he came and lived with me and stayed above the garage in a converted studio. 

He wouldn’t take off that stupid ring,” she said with a small smile. 

“What happened?” he asked, feeling shame at his presumptions wash over him, wanting nothing more than to fall to his knees and beg for her forgiveness. 

Erin met his eyes as tears began to fall from between the dark fringes of her eyelashes. “Dr. Cruz wanted to hurt me for disobeying him, he killed Alex’s ex and showed him video of it being done. Alex lost his fucking mind at that point and jumped into the quarry.”

“I’ve never even gotten to see his grave,” she muttered before her voice threatened to break and she started to turn away from him.

“Wait,” Bane demanded and moved with startling speed to catch her arm before she could make a full rotation. 

Erin looked down at his hand closed around her bicep before up to find his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he murmured on a husky whisper. 

She sniffed hard and closed her eyes, “it’s a reasonable assumption,” she finally said. 

“Can we go back to this?” he asked on a heavy groan as he tugged her into his warm, formidable embrace. His thoughts were only on making her body sing. 

Erin nodded and sighed heavily as she sagged against him. “This is where I belong,” she murmured and allowed Bane’s lips to find hers after he had removed his mask and moved his hands hungrily over her body. 

Bane coaxed anticipatory moans to spill from her lips as he pulled her clothes away and free from her as he pushed her down to the top of the mattress. 

“Will this be okay for you?” Bane asked in a strained tone as the rough pads of his fingertips traced around her healing side. Under her skin, the muscles and flesh were continuing to steadily knit back together. 

“Just not too vigorous,” Erin murmured between the contact of their lips. She gasped when he dropped his head lower and caught one of her hardening nipples in his mouth. 

Bane trailed his lips along the curvature of her breast and kissed a path down her ribcage. A shiver ran through her bodies and left a residual tingling in her toes when his lips moved around her healing wound. He spoke with his mouth centimeters above her skin, each syllable spoken on a warm exhalation. 

“I will do whatever you ask doctor.”

Erin arched her back as his hands slid up the sides of her naked thighs and curled his fingertips around the top of her panties. She found a strangled gasp tear its way from her throat as he pulled the fabric free from her body. 

He let his fingertips dance from her hips to the inside of her thighs and push them further apart. Bane growled with feral delight as her femininity was exposed to his gaze and he lowered his mouth to the apex at the top of her thighs. 

Erin found herself only able to speak in low moans as she felt Bane’s mouth and tongue tickle and explore her wet, delicate folds. He found himself relishing in the sounds he was able to manifest from his varying touches and caresses. 

Erin’s thighs began to shake as she neared release and Bane finally had to give into his body’s growing and unrelenting need. He leaned over and kept the majority of his weight on his elbows as he let his engorged and painfully erect cock tease at her wet opening. 

Erin shivered as he kissed her neck and chuckled lowly in her ear as her body flushed with need at the anticipation of his touch. 

Bane pushed his cock into her body with careful slowness until their lower bodies kissed. She clutched at him as her body tightened and adjusted to him as he paused and began to move with deliberate control. 

“Are you okay?” he asked in a strained voice. Bane’s body longed for release, but he wanted to savor each second of being sheathed inside her. Erin nodded, her ability to articulate words momentarily hobbled as her orgasm exploded in her lower belly and shot throughout her limbs. 

When the intimate walls of her femininity constricted around his cock in her unashamed throes of ecstasy, his control crumbled, and he felt his own body bow to his need for pleasurable release. 

For a short time, the two of them laid together in the tangled sheets with their combined bodily fluids and a fine sheen of sweat drying on their naked bodies.

Erin lazily pulled her clothes back into place and zipped up a simple black sweater as she followed Bane out of the underground bunker towards a forest green SUV with a dented front bumper. 

Bane never released Erin’s hand all the way to the dock where the cargo ship was preparing to depart to Miami, Florida. As he walked her towards the ship, his heartbeat increased as he faced the reality of never seeing her again. 

As it came time for Erin to leave Bane’s side and board the ship, he pulled her into his arms and crushed her against his chest. As Bane spoke, he found he could still taste her on his lips.

“I will see you within a week,” he whispered to the top of her head.

“Swear it,” Erin demanded, her words slightly garbled from being pressed against his broad chest. 

“I swear it,” Bane repeated emphatically and kissed her with an intensity that rivaled the simultaneous meltdown of all the world’s four hundred plus nuclear reactors. 

He watched her depart and wave goodbye from the top of the weathered deck.

“I swear it,” Bane said to himself and forced himself to turn away and return to the SUV where several followers waited to carry out the rest of his plans for Gotham. 

Erin watched from the deck of the cargo ship as Bane climbed into the olive-green SUV. They each raised a hand in goodbye and faded from each other’s sight. 

Erin waited until the SUV’s taillights disappeared into the night before she joined Tabby and Owen in the cabin that they would all be sharing. With the short notice there hadn’t been much room to carve out for the three extra travelers. 

As Erin sat on a metal folding chair and propped her feet up on the edge of one of the two creaking cots, back in the Gotham City Police Department, the building was milling about with people. Multiple speculative in nature conversations took place and each garbage can was graced by the presence of paper coffee cups and empty pastel packets that had originally served as sarcophagi for real and artificial sugar.

One of the many meeting rooms was occupied by Blake and Gordon. The men were leaning over maps of the city as well as photographs obtained from the scene of the “New Year’s Nightmare”, as the papers had taken to printing in bold font. Blake and Gordon were joined by several other over-zealous police officers and even a sprinkling of civilians who were ex-military.

As the group of men poured over the photos and medical examiner reports, Bane returned with his small group of heavily armed men to an East End back-alley Mahjong parlor. Him and his men were quietly escorted to a table in the rear of the smoke-filled room. 

Bane took a seat with his broad back to the wall, nothing obstructing his view of the dimly shrouded entrance and exit. He had received word from an informant that Blake and Gordon would be present at the police station for a press conference set up by several members of Homeland Security and the FBI. 

Bane let a partially gloved hand slip into his jacket pocket and pull out a slim, titanium detonator. He let the rough pad of his thumb rub across the plastic button that when depressed would cause a good deal of the downtown area of Gotham to evaporate. Included in the explosive’s path would be the entirety of the police precinct, City Hall, and many other legal entities. 

Bane watched as a slender man in thick lens glasses sitting at a nearby table placed a Red Dragon tile down in front of him and completed the elusive Thirteen Orphans set which awarded him quite the healthy pot. As money continued to be simultaneously won and lost, Bane depressed the remote device’s black plastic button and downtown Gotham sprang to live in fiery flames and black, noxious smoke. 

The sound of the explosion rattled the glass windows of neighboring high-rises and storefronts and caught Bruce and Selina’s attention as they had also been pouring over crime scene photos. They both jumped to their feet from where they had been analyzing the evidentiary compiled reports. Selina knew in her gut as the first tendrils of the explosion reached her ears that Bane was behind everything. Bruce looked over at her as she shook her head. “We should have come back sooner.”

“We’re here now,” Bruce said easily and called Lucius Fox. 

As Bruce and Selina rushed to meet Lucius Fox, in the opposite direction, the cargo ship continued to move south towards Florida. 

Tabby was absorbed in a bodice-ripping historical romance novel and Owen napped as Erin felt filled with a nervous energy. Her fingertips tingled, Tabby glanced over and giggled when her stomach gave a long, low grumble. 

Erin managed to not laugh and threaten to wake Owen as she whispered. “Can I take that to mean you’re hungry?” she asked in a conspiratorial tone.  
Tabby nodded and whispered back, “I’ve really been wanting a grilled cheese sandwich.” 

Erin shrugged. “That actually sounds kinda good,” and added with a smile as she stood. “Maybe I’ll make two.”

“Well, I want at least two,” Tabby said with a serious expression that made Erin laugh. “I’ll make a bunch,” she said as she left the cramped cabin and followed the shorthand directions, she had written on how to find the kitchen. 

Erin found the kitchen and opened the door to find a vacant room dominated by a long pair of stainless-steel countertops. She rooted around in several cold cases and cabinets until she found a log of orange cheese, a loaf of sliced sandwich bread and stick of butter. Erin was engrossed in her search for a pan and didn’t hear the soft footsteps approach from behind her. 

She did however smell him and turned to find a patchy bearded man in a stained apron standing too close for her liking. Erin took a casual sidestep, just to gain a little more space and tried to speak in a conversational tone. “Hi, I was just looking for a frying pan so I can make my friend some dinner.”

“They’re over there,” the chef said and pointed at a lower cabinet that she hadn’t looked in yet. Erin watched as he opened the slim metal door and pulled a pan from the bottom shelf and placed it on one of the free burners of the stove. 

“Oh great, thank you,” she said with a fleeting moment of relief before the chef looked at her and spoke with a nasty sneer.

“This friend you’re cooking for, is she that tight little cunt on the third deck?”

Erin felt a well of repugnance for the fat, deviant bastard that was standing in front of her with a grin plastered across his chubby face. 

“Well, don’t let me stop you from cooking,” he continued with a smile that boasted crooked, tobacco stained teeth. 

Erin paused as she tried to decide the next, best course of action. She continued to sidestep until she was at the other stove. “I will not let this pig scare me. I’m going to hurry with these sandwiches and then get back to Owen and Tabby,” Erin thought as she turned on the burner as her mind whirred with rationalization. 

“He’s not going to try and fuck with me if I have a hot pan,” she convinced herself and mentally encouraged the butter to melt faster. 

The sleazy chef’s voice called over the sizzle when she slapped the sandwich into the hot pan. 

“There’s a rental fee for the kitchen use though.”

Erin shook her head. “How much?” she asked knowing that this dumb shit probably couldn’t count too high and it might not cost her much. 

“I don’t take cash,” he said and then added in a tone that caused the hairs on her arms to stand erect. “But you can suck my cock,” he added as he cupped a hand over his groin. 

“You can’t talk to me like that or even begin to think about touching me,” Erin said with a surge of anger.

“Oh ya? Why’s that cunt?” 

“Because,” Erin started to say and then trailed off as a frown blossomed on her flushed forehead. 

“Because I will kill you,” she finally said after a pregnant pause. 

“You’ll kill me?” the culinary deviant scoffed and spit on the floor before adding. “I’ll use you and your little cunt friend as shark bait. I’ll cut your goddamn body into chum myself after I fuck every hole you have.”

“No, you won’t,” Erin said in an eerily calm tone as she pulled a 1911 .45 caliber handgun from the back of her slacks. Bane had passed her the matte black titanium gun after he had screwed a three-inch silencer to the end. 

“To be real redundant,” Erin said with a real laugh and genuine smile. A lazy grin that was meant to incite fear and a feeling of powerlessness. A small lift of her lips that was entirely self-serving as the chef’s eyes widened, not at the sight of the gun but her steady hands and accurate aim. “I will kill you.”

The scruffy bearded man felt trapped in her gaze and casual address as she continued to direct her upbeat attitude towards him. “This little thing holds ten,” Erin said with an atrocious southern twang before switching to a passable Clint Eastwood impersonation. “And I haven’t fired any, so you can’t possibly feel lucky.” 

The sexual deviant lifted both of his hands in the air and couldn’t keep the tremble out of his voice when he begged. “I’m sorry, sorry, please, sorry. I have a family,” he started to blubber before Erin interrupted him and spoke in an abrupt tone. 

“You have a fucking family and you threaten to hurt me and my friends? I happen to know for a fact that you bastards are getting paid a lot for us to hitchhike to Florida,” Erin started as her voice continued to raise in volume as she practically shouted. “You have a fucking family?”

“Yes, yes, a wife, and. And, a. And….,” the chef tried to articulate before Erin rolled her eyes and interrupted him again. She spoke in a venomous tone that was laced with gratuitous amounts of dripping sarcasm. 

“Oh, for fuck’s sake. Be some sort of man. Honestly, do you need a minute to change your goddamn tampon? You have a wife and all the Porky Pig stuttering is to indicate offspring?” Erin asked and the chef sniffed hard before nodding and taking a deep breath, nonverbally confirming. 

“Yes…yes, a wife and three sons,” he managed and gave another hard sniff. 

“So, is this your thing, you threaten and then what? Hurt female stowaways?” Erin asked as all humor fell away from her voice as she added when the chef remained silent. “Hmmm? Is that it? Is that what you do, what others do?”

He shook his head with enthusiastic mania and tried his best to not stammer. “No…no I made a mistake, please, sorry. Don’t kill me, please.”

Erin tilted her head to the side. “You made a mistake?” she asked. As Erin regarded the man in terrifying silence, back in Gotham City, Bruce and Selina rushed to the scene of the explosion and the aftermath of the spongy blocks of plastic explosives.


	12. Violent Late-Night Snacking

“We should have come back sooner,” Selina said as she sat shotgun on the way to the center of the city. The scent of burning yellow fat and tire rubber rained down in chaotic stench and grew more pungent with each passing tenth of a mile. 

“We’ve stopped him once, we’ll stop him again,” Bruce said and pressed the accelerator to the floor as a call from Fox came through. 

Fox was safe in the basement of an abandoned steel mill. Fox had a stack of reports about the neurotoxin that Bane had released upon downtown Gotham in gas form and was reviewing the police and city damage reports from Bane’s past attempt at leveling Gotham. 

Bruce and Selina got out of the car and stepped as close as they could to the fiery epicenter that used to be the Gotham City Police Department precinct. The entirety of the block was leveled and crushed by the powerful explosives. 

Bruce was washed over with too many thoughts to separate and fumbled for his phone as he dialed first Blake’s number and received nothing. He blew out a sharp breath and dialed Gordon’s and again received nothing on the other end. 

Selina watched Bruce, concern creasing her brow as he dropped his phone back in his inner pocket. “They’re all gone,” Selina said as her eyes burned with the acrid smoke. 

The roar of the fire’s hungry maw disguised nearly all peripheral sounds. In the midst of Bruce’s loss and Selina’s sympathy, they didn’t hear the few strong members of one of Bane’s sleeper cells approach with plastic zip ties and hypodermic needles full of a pale pink liquid. 

The contents of each syringe soon ended up in Selina and Bruce’s neck. The solution that began pumping through their bodies was a tranquilizer that Erin had developed at Bane’s request that induced paralysis and a blacked-out state of sleep. The drug was based in part from the magnificent and powerful venom of the bloated glands of the spider genus Lactrodectus, known as the shiny bodied Black Widow spider. Erin had borrowed from the neurotoxin of the sexually cannibalistic female spider. The venom in combination with a few other select narcotics would keep Selina and Bruce immobile for a healthy amount of time. 

Even longer with booster shots. 

In the end, the drug lasted long enough for Bane to have them both moved to the pit of Pena Dura. As Erin had recuperated earlier from her abdominal wound, Bane had sent a team to check on Pena Dura and reopen the pit for business. 

As Selina and Bruce’s unconscious forms were loaded into a plain grey van, approaching by car while on a satellite phone, one of the five dispatched soldiers of fortune dialed up Gables at the Pentagon. The hired ex-military man reported to Gables that all traces of Bane and Erin had disappeared, and all tips had proved to be dead ends. The hired man also informed Gables how downtown Gotham had been reduced to a burning inferno. 

Gables clenched his teeth until his jaw popped and he seethed into the phone as his voce dropped into a low and dangerously controlled whisper. “Question everyone again. You’ve all been in Gitmo before; you know how to make people talk.”

The well-paid killer ended the call and turned to his fellow brothers-in-blood and relayed Gables orders. 

While the well-paid ex-soldiers approached the scene of the explosive devastation, Lucius Fox provided Bruce with a list of people that had been paid through a slush fund of Daggett Industries and all resided near downtown Gotham City. Fox frowned when the phone rang three times and then went dead. That was the moment when one of the paid members of Bane’s army smashed Bruce’s smart phone under his laced combat boot and tossed the plastic detritus remains out of the moving vehicle’s passenger window. 

Fox redialed Bruce’s number and received nothing but empty, dead air. While sailing on the Atlantic Ocean, Erin lowered the gun an inch or so and the chef took a visibly relieved breath. 

“If I were to kill you, where would I put your body?” Erin asked as she plucked a spatula from a jar of utensils. She kept the gun trained on the center of his chest and used her other hand to slide the smooth plastic under the crisp side of the sandwich and flip it in the pan. Erin continued speaking before the chef could think about answering. The warm and comforting smell of toasted bread and melting cheese filled the air as she spoke.

“If you weren’t here, people would notice and that wouldn’t be good. So, I can’t kill you,” she said and then added with a truthful smirk. “Not while we’re on the water that is. But if I or my two friends receive as much as a splinter or paper cut, I will take your life.”

The chef’s pale face began to come back to a normal color when she plated one grilled sandwich and then squeezed two more into the pan. While sweat began to dry on the chef’s face and neck, across the world at the bottom of Pena Dura, Bruce and Selina began to awaken from the strong clutches of the narcotic cocktail.   
Selina coughed and cracked open her eyes and turned her head to the right to see Bruce already awake and looking at her from a wooden cot on the other side of some heavy iron bars. 

They croaked to each other from parched throats and established that neither was hurt very badly. 

“Where are we?” 

Bruce closed his eyes and told her exactly where they were. Selina recalled Bruce discussing Pena Dura and how Bane and Talia had risen from this pit. 

Bruce and Selina fell silent from fatigue, each lost in the grey space between their conscious and unconscious minds. 

“We should have come back sooner.” Selina thought as a spike of pain wedged behind her eyes. 

Bruce’s thoughts landed in the arena of past memories; he had no way of knowing that Erin had surgically implanted the internal pain pump in Bane’s flank. Bruce and Selina were also unaware that Erin had reinvented the analgesic inhalant that had improved Bane’s agility, strength and eviscerated his all-around level of pain and tolerance for agony. 

A small television that was mounted outside the bars gave Bruce chilling de-ja-vu when it clicked on and the grainy picture cleared to reveal Bane sitting against a dull grey background. 

Selina’s eyes widened despite her groggy and fatigued physical state when Bane appeared in his mask looking better than he had when she had last seen him. 

She couldn’t suppress a shudder when his chilling melodic voice leaked from the screen and his mechanical syllables penetrated her frontal lobe. 

“Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of men. And Mr. Wayne and Ms. Kyle, we are only just beginning.”

Even after the television had gone to static and faded to black, Bane’s words reverberated on the inside of Selina’s skull.

A few days passed and the narcotic fog lifted enough for Bruce and Selina to rise from their wooden cots and assess their state of imprisonment. As they examined every square inch of their confinements, on the open waters of the vast Atlantic Ocean, Tabby, Owen, and Erin spent their time eating, reading, and napping. 

Tabby’s pregnancy was proving difficult and her ankles seemed to always be swollen, the skin painfully stretched to accommodate the excess fluid. Erin and Owen traded off with meal prepping and fetching. Erin spent a lot of time massaging Tabby’s feet and lower legs. 

One surprisingly pleasant night on the powerful body of water, Erin made herself a whiskey spiked coffee. She sipped her warm and comforting drink on the deck of the cargo ship, bundled up in a thick, fleece-lined jacket and wool scarf. 

Erin took a sit of the strong coffee and felt the alcoholic warmth spread throughout her chest and belly. 

She looked down at the ring that adorned her chilly finger. She couldn’t find her gloves earlier but quickly warmed them by gripping the chipped ceramic mug.

Her eyes danced along the sparkling diamond in the platinum setting that glowed dully under the light of waning moon. Erin closed her eyes and imagined the cathedral cut diamond ring once being boasted by an executed, innocent Romanov daughter. 

Erin had caught herself wondering if this was one of the rings that Alexandra Romanov’s maid had in a pillowcase or if this was taken directly off the dead Romanov’s girl’s finger in 1918.

Her thoughts moved to the duffle bag containing some of the wedding accessories that Bane had delivered to her in the underground bunker. Erin blew out a sharp breath and looked at the endless horizon and wished she had stayed at his side. 

While Erin finished her adult coffee and headed back to her cot to try and catch some sleep, in his office at the Pentagon, Gables picked up his phone and hesitated with his index finger over the number one speed dial button. The push of the grey button would connect him to the Oval Office and the Commander-in-Chief. 

Gables knew he should have reported the situation with the government’s misplaced toys sooner, but he was certain he’d had it under complete control. He replaced the phone in its plastic cradle and sat back in his leather high-backed office chair. Gables contemplated his dwindling options, he had gone all-in with the mercenaries and soldiers of fortune who were using “enhanced interrogative techniques,” to seek information on Bane and Erin. 

Gables checked his phone again for a missed call or message, finding none, he slammed his fists on his desk and left his office in a dull rage. He rode the elevator down to the ground floor and bought a black coffee in a Styrofoam cup. He perused the pastry selection and added a slice of banana bread to his order before walking to the Pentagon’s designated smoking grounds. 

As Gables drank his coffee, he paused a moment to light up a menthol cigarette and check his phone again. As he was once again disappointed, up in the air in a low-flying plane, Bane sat with a few loyal soldiers on the way to Pena Dura to have a face-to-face discussion with Bruce and Selina. He would have preferred a larger plane, but Erin had warned him on the way to the cargo ship that he needed to avoid high altitudes. Above 12,000 feet could cause his internal pain pump to malfunction and perhaps stop working altogether. 

Bane felt a nervous energy fill his body and the delicious anticipatory fantasy of spilling blood, breaking bones and splintering souls danced behind his eyes.   
He had given marching orders to the anonymous men on the plane with him and they knew their role defined to the very letter as soon as the plane touched down on the desert runway. 

As the plane touched down within a healthy trek by ATV to the Pit of Pena Dura, Selina and Bruce discussed plans of how to escape and then bring down Bane for good.   
Bruce was overconfident and spoke in a near-jovial tone despite their incarcerated state. “We need to destroy his mask or better yet altogether remove it. He was near hobbled by minor damage to it.”

Selina fed off Bruce’s over inflated ego and self-assurance, having no way of knowing about the internal pain pump that Erin had planted under Bane’s muscular flank.  
Bane sat shotgun in one of the faded canary yellow ATV’s and crossed the bumpy terrain towards the Pit as Erin, Tabby and Owen continued to travel nautical miles on the way to sunny Miami. 

Bane’s mind went eerily calm and quiet as it always did in preparation for combat and confrontation. 

This time though, an image sprouted in his mind and grew into a slide show of past, present, and future images. 

The first visual that painted its way to the front of his conscious mind was opening his eyes and seeing Erin through the clear wall of their underground incarceration. 

The images sped forward to her near evisceration of Dr. Gottlieb.

Bane saw the Pit approaching as his mind flashed a few last second rapid-fire images of Erin underneath him, her thighs wrapped around his waist, clutching him as he sweetly and hotly fucked her. The gleaming antiquity that now adorned her left ring finger and a future image of being pronounced husband and wife. 

The anonymous soldier-of-fortune behind the wheel brought the ATV to a halt and Bane and his fatal crew descended into the Pit. They were all heavily armed and felt a heady rush each time they depressed a trigger, each gunshot was like a satisfying ejaculation.

Before Bane descended into the Pit that brought phantom pains to tease his body, he depressed a 10ml syringe into the top of his hip. The hypodermic needle contained a light pink mix of a few drugs that would allow more oxygen to saturate the cells and enable him more speed, strength, and stamina, as well as another layer of being impervious to pain. 

When Bane reached the bottom of the Pit, he made the short walk to Selina and Bruce’s cells. Bane had ensured their basic needs were met by having a man paid to provide food, water and medical attention if needed. 

He found Selina and Bruce standing as close as the bars would let them, conferring about how to deal with the impending destruction of Gotham City. 

Selina saw Bane first and her voice died in her throat and Bruce followed her line of sight. They both stood more erect and held their chins high, a certain amount of false confidence filled their bodies as they believed hobbling the mask would hobble the man. 

“Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle, today I bring you a choice. Life or death,” Bane started and gestured behind him to a large caged structure that had been built by a crew of men in the daylight hours. 

The chain link sided cube was empty, and Bruce and Selina followed where Bane pointed as he continued speaking. “This is where your choice will be made. You will be brought there, and we shall have a fight to the death. This is where you will decide,” Bane said and added in a haunting yet melodic tone as he again pointed at the cage.

“If you should attempt an escape, you will be shot. If you prevail, you have my permission to continue your lives. Do you understand the terms of your options?”

Selina leaned close to the iron bars as Bruce whispered to her. “Aim for the mask any chance you get; it will render him defenseless.”

Bruce walked towards the front of his cell and stared at Bane. “We accept and choose life.”

Bane smiled broadly behind his mask at the narcissistic confidence that filled each of Bruce’s buoyantly spoken words. 

As Bruce and Selina were led under heavy gunpoint trigger happy men to the empty cage with Bane bringing up the rear, the deadly men that Gables had hired kept seeming to arrive at every place pulled from mouths under “legal torture,” a day too late. They found and searched the underground bunker and then all leads disappeared and all they were faced with were random and multiple tire tracks leading in several directions. 

Bane had left an army of men planted around Gotham. One group of armed men were assigned as lookout for areas that might be of interest for the United States government to search. The loyal men spied the men Gables sent snooping around the now abandoned underground bunker. 

The paid men spread out and the two men that had served at one time as snipers with a combined kill confirmation of over six hundred between them, took aim at the heads and hearts of the five hired men. The two men who both happened to be named Mike, had earned their kill counts during Somalia and Desert Storm. 

The first Mike made a small hand signal and the two men opened fired and rapidly dropped the entire quintet of government paid men with exclusively cranium and neck shots. Grey matter spilled from gaping and splintered holes through white bone, carotid arteries and jugular veins were ripped apart by exploding hollow-point maximum loaded bullets. The two Mikes each lit a cigarette and took a few puffs before extinguishing them on their forearms to mark their kills. 

Mike Number One made three burns and Mike Number Two made a pair of circular marks. Each man’s forearm was a scarred and thick-ridged grotesque mess, boasting a burn from each of their confirmed kills. 

As the two Mike’s congratulated themselves on their rise in body count collecting, Bane, Selina and Bruce were secured in the chain cage. One of the anonymous men was posted on top of the cage and armed with a high-powered rifle in case Bruce or Selina tried to escape. 

As Bane, Selina and Bruce circled each other and sized each other up, back in Gotham City, Lucius Fox frowned as he couldn’t reach Bruce, Selina, Gordon, or Blake at any of their phone numbers. The radio Fox had on, had been tuned a classical music station when an emergency broadcast broke in and announced the explosion downtown and the inferno that City Hall and the Gotham City Police Department precinct had become.

Preliminary triaging was listing the death toll to close to fifteen thousand by the time the news station switched to its sister station that was reporting from near the flames. Fox scrambled for his electronic tablet and pulled up the breaking news report. Soon pictures of burning Gotham City filled the shiny screen.

Fox’s eyes widened as the emergency personnel and fire department scrambled to extinguish the raging and hungry flames. He increased the volume to maximum and accessed the satellite system that Wayne Enterprises owned and typed in the tracking number for the small chip planted in the belt of Bruce’s suit. 

While the computer communicated back and forth with the satellite, Tabby, Owen, and Erin grew closer to Miami. Since the gun incident in the kitchen, word had spread from the porky chef and none of the crew addressed Erin or dared even walk in her shadow. The sweaty fat fuck chef had painted Erin out to be a hormonal psychopath. Erin didn’t care what he had said as long as no one bothered her, Owen, or Tabby.

As Erin made a late-night salty snack to satisfy Tabby’s craving and snagged a few potato chips for herself, Bruce lunged forward with a hard-right hook aimed for the center of Bane’s coiled metallic mask.


	13. What Would You Have of Me?

Bane anticipated the strike and stepped back just out of range, Bruce’s fist hit nothing but air and he in turn dodged Bane’s return hook. While Bane’s fist followed through on its intending strike, Selina darted forward and swung her impossibly long leg into a perfect form roundhouse kick. Her foot struck above Bane’s kidney and he pivoted sharply on his heel to catch her ankle and pull her off balance that she nearly fell flat to the ground.

Selina scrambled to her feet and just missed being struck in the nose by the steel toe of Bane’s boot. 

Bruce rebutted with a series of left and right jabs with follow-up uppercuts, his fists landed and dented some of the coils on the front of Bane’s mask. Selina felt a surge of artificial confidence when she heard Bruce’s fists strike Bane’s mask and she leapt forward with a high front kick that was aimed squarely at Bane’s chin. 

Bane moved with impossible and dangerous agility as his left hand shot out with astonishing speed and gripped the front of Bruce’s throat while his right hand moved with the same startling accuracy and smashed the bridge of Selina’s nose. She issued a guttural cry as the cartilage of her nose splintered and warm copper scented blood spilled from each of her nostrils and made her cough as it ran down the back of her throat. 

Bruce had barely a moment to issue a sound when Bane dug his fingers into the soft flesh of his throat and applied a gratuitous amount of pressure. Bane’s strong fingertips pushed into the yielding flesh and muscles of his neck before closing around Bruce’s esophagus. Bane pulled back with forceful pressure and life evaporated from the eccentric billionaire Bruce Wayne.

Selina Kyle tried to rise from the ground as blood continued to gush from her broken nose as screams fell from her lips. She screeched bloody murder and lunged at Bane, her hands outstretched, aimed exclusively for his mask. Bane basically caught her flying form and she clawed with bloody hands at his mask and succeeded in loosening it to some degree.

Selina pushed off his chest and took a defensive crouch as her nose throbbed when she heard a satisfying hiss emit from the coils of his mask. 

Selina’s features fell as Bane remained standing and stared down at her. Her brow furrowed when Bane didn’t appear any worse for wear as he casually affixed his mask straps back into place with infinite slowness. 

She stood on shaky feet as the pain had faded with her rising shock and she raised her fists and faced him. Selina’s eyes burned with unshed tears as her gaze fell to Bruce’s dead form. She threw a combination of punches and kicks and Bane blocked each one as Selina’s hits became more erratic and uncontrolled. She threw a sharp jab and Bane caught her elbow and pulled her body close, aided by her forward momentum. 

Any sound she thought to make was eradicated when Bane’s hands found a place on each side of her head and brutally snapped her neck. He let her limp body fall to a flaccid heap and exited the chain cage without a backwards glance. 

As soon as Bane had taken their two lives, his mind cleared and filled with thoughts of a wedding to a certain doctor who was sailing towards sunny Florida.  
Bane and the anonymous armed men left Bruce and Selina’s bodies to naturally decompose under the elements and headed to Miami at a low altitude as Tabby, Owen and Erin continued to pass the time with endless reading and crossword puzzle completions. 

As the trio drew closer to Miami, unbeknownst to Erin, so did Bane. As he sat in the connecting Leer jet he had commandeered, he made endless phone calls and messages to multiple sleeper cells in Gotham City and his random informants that were now milling about Washington D.C. 

Bane had been slowly but effectively infiltrating the many legal entities on the East Coast. He found himself anxious for the jet to touchdown in Florida, so he could be reunited with Erin again. 

He had just spoken with one of the crew members on the cargo ship who had informed Bane that they were less than an hour from Miami. Bane was due to arrive in just over three. He ended the call with the ship crew member and dialed another number as the ship pulled into a Miami dock just about an hour later. 

Owen and Erin gathered the luggage and Tabby followed them off the ship, they easily found a taxi and made their way towards the hotel that Bane had reserved under Erin’s name. The cabbie was very chatty and filled the trip to the hotel with a nonstop monologue about the many sights to see in Miami and the surrounding areas. 

Erin gave him a healthy tip for the sheer energy he contained when they arrived at the beautiful hotel and checked in at the front desk of the airy and spacious lobby. 

Tabby squealed in girlish delight when she saw the two-room suite that Bane had reserved that boasted a fully stocked mini-bar with six-dollar pretzels and obscenely priced bottles of Jack.

Tabby immediately kicked off her shoes and sighed, reveling in the feel of the plush sea green carpet fibers under her bare toes. She skipped from each bedroom suite that had its own attached and private bathroom with spa tub and large glass shower. 

“I want this one,” she said, calling dibs on the room that faced a lovely cluster of vibrant and purple blossom adorned bushes. 

Erin smiled as Owen directed Owen to carry the suitcases to the appropriate room and picked up the phone and dialed room service after she announced she was hungry. 

Erin stretched her arms overhead and listened as Tabby ordered a plate of French fries with a side order of ranch dressing and a sparkling water. “Do you want anything?” she called to Owen who declined and Erin.

“I want a really big raspberry margarita with lotsa salt,” she said as she stifled a yawn. 

Tabby giggled and placed the cocktail order. A decent wait passed before the deep-fried golden fries and creamy addictive ranch arrived as well as Erin’s extra-large margarita. 

Tabby and Owen soon disappeared into their room in the suite and Erin took her cocktail into the bathroom and ran a full bath. She squirted a healthy amount of gardenia bubble bath under the rushing water and settled down in the near-scalding water with her cocktail on the wide edge of the porcelain tub. 

Erin sighed as the water attacked the tense muscles of her back and shoulders, she inhaled the warm steam that carried a delicate floral scent and took a few long sips from the salted rim of her glass. 

Erin soaked a plush washrag in the sudsy water and wrung it out before laying it across her eyes and reclining against the back of the sloped tub. 

“Would you like some company doctor?”

Erin sat up ramrod straight in the deep bathtub, all fatigue vanishing as Bane’s voice filled the quiet bathroom. The washrag fell from her eyes as she turned towards the door, fragrant bubbles sliding and popping across her naked skin as a wide smile filled her face.

“Please tell me you’re really here and I’m not hallucinating,” Erin said as her heart began to race at just the sight of Bane standing in the spacious bathroom’s doorway. 

“I haven’t even finished my drink, so I know I’m not drunk,” she added as her body filled with tingling, anticipatory energy. 

Bane smiled under his mask as his eyes equally drank in Erin as she sat in the hot, soapy water and his own heartbeat began to increase. 

“I’m really here doctor,” he said in a low mechanical rumble and dropped his hands to his vest’s closure. Erin’s breath slowed to the barest of inhalations as Bane removed each article of clothing. 

Erin took a few long sips off her salt-rimmed glass as each dropped piece of clothing accompanied him taking a step closer to the bathtub full of fragrant water. The alcohol spread warmth throughout her chest and down to fill her belly as he reached the porcelain edge of the tub. 

She let her eyes drop from his and make a slow lazy trail down his heavily scarred body. The bathroom’s overhead lights made Bane’s skin seem to glow from within and Erin’s gaze traveled his broad chest and heavily muscled torso. 

She felt a pleasant feeling spread throughout her lower body as her gaze dipped lower to his hardening masculinity. Erin unconsciously bit her lower lip as he stepped into the tub and sank into the floral scented water with deliberate slowness.

Bane’s eyes began to glaze over with thoughts born purely from lust that only grew under Erin’s heavy gaze. 

As soon as Bane had settled into the water, Erin moved through the opalescent bubbles towards him. She ran her hands up his solid forearms and along the prominent lines of his biceps. 

Bane found himself close to holding his breath as she traced her fingertips along the deep indentations of his triceps and moved upwards along the smooth muscled caps of his shoulders. 

As Erin moved her hands over his collarbones the line of his neck, Bane reached out and settled his hands on her hips and pulled her naked body closer.   
He made a small appreciative melodic sound as Erin pressed her lips above the strong pulse in his neck.

“I’m glad you’re back, now we can look to the future,” she whispered against his neck and let her fingertips dance up to the metallic clasps and buckles of his mask. 

Bane tightened his embrace and drew her flush against the front of his body. The water sloshed against the sides of the tub as he pulled Erin forward. She moved her legs apart and let a thigh settle on either side of his hips. She bit back a gasp as his rigid cock brushed against her naked femininity. 

“The future starts in two days,” Bane said as Erin continued removing his mask. “What do you mean?” she asked as her hands paused in their movement. 

Erin dropped her hands to the edges of tub and her smooth forehead pulled into a frown as Bane answered her question. He increased the pressure of his hands on her hips and began to massage her warm and wet skin. 

“In two days, I shall travel to take down the next city filled with legions of the unrepentant.”

Erin remained silent as he lifted one hand from her hip and released the final clasp of his mask. She watched as he lifted it from his face and set it to the side of the tub. 

She put a hand on his chest when he attempted to pull her forward to meet his lips.

“What’s wrong doctor?” he asked with a genuine perplexed tone to his voice. 

“You’re not done yet? Didn’t you accomplish all you set forth to do?” Erin asked with a simmering start of irritation. 

“We’ve only just begun doctor?” he said and used brute strength to yank her against his body. 

“We?” she scoffed and pushed both hands against his chest, fully aware that it was an operation composed entirely of futility if based solely on physical strength. “We?” Erin repeated and added in an angry tone. “Now you’re speaking fucking French.”

As Bane tried to understand her surge of anger, back at the monochromatic office in the Pentagon, Cables phone rang, and his testicles wanted to climb inside his body when he heard the NSA Director’s voice on the other end of the line.

“You need to un-fuck yourself Gables, erase any data on Project Europa.”

Gables started to interrupt about the administration not negotiating with terrorists before the Director shut him down. 

“If you feel you can’t stop the interest in Bane and Dr. Gibson, then I will come visit you at your home some evening and fuck your wife while I make you watch. If you try and look away, I’ll cut off your goddamn eyelids before I slit her throat.”

As Gables processed the words that he had just heard, Lucius Fox wrote down a series of coordinates that the satellite revealed. 

As Fox made a few calls to people that hadn’t been fatally injured in Gotham’s razing to get to Bruce and hopefully Selina, back in the bathroom at the lush Miami hotel, Erin’s body stiffened in Bane’s powerful arms. She found his strength quite staggering and only had herself and her surgical skills to directly thank and point   
blame. 

“Let go of me,” Erin hissed in a low tone and waited. 

Bane crushed her harder to his chest. “No.”

“Please?” she whispered and struggled uselessly.

“I shall release you, as soon as you explain what has caused your anger doctor.”

“I will not stay on this murderous carousel with you anymore,” Erin started and shifted back when she felt Bane’s grip ease up for just the barest moment of time. She managed to put a small amount of space between their bodies, but not enough. She could feel his hard cock pressing into her soft, naked inner thigh as she continued in a whisper when he remained silent. 

“I helped you escape from that prison,” Erin said and slid one hand down from his chest to rest over where she had implanted his pain pump before she added. “I helped you with your pain, but I won’t do it anymore. I’m…,” she started before trailing off. 

“Please continue doctor,” Bane said and relaxed his hold around her body. 

“This is a chance to have a real change, I want to start a new life and future,” she said and locked eyes with him. “I want to start that future together with you,” Erin added in a softer tone and raised a hand to cup his scarred jaw. She traced her thumb over the thick raised scar on his lower lip. “I had a childhood that was cut short and a busy job until I was incarcerated in that plastic prison. The plans they had for me but especially for you,” Erin whispered as she stroked the smooth pads of her fingertips along the bridge of his nose and across his cheekbones.

“More importantly I’m tired,” she said and lowered her lips to hover over his. “Please don’t make me leave you. I don’t want to, but I will not live with the worry that you will disappear on one of these trips or be killed.”

“You would leave me?” Bane asked in an unreadable tone. Their lips separated by mere centimeters. 

“I will not live like that,” she said with unapologetic adamancy. 

Erin’s words washed over his auditory senses. Each syllable saturated with truth that was coupled with the agony of regret.

Bane returned her gaze and could feel her soft skin under the rough pads of his fingertips. She struggled to not audibly sigh as he eased her perceptibly closer with the gentlest of pressure. 

As Bane kept his hands firmly on her supple, naked flesh, his thoughts turned dark and devoid of life as his eyes filled with darkness. As a heavy frown appeared on his brow, he looked to Erin and tightened his grip on her hips until she nearly hissed in pain. 

As Bane’s conscious mind was assaulted with freeze-frame images of his life without her, Fox’s helicopter landed near the Pit of Pena Dura. Fox kept his head low as he jogged to where the satellite noted the location of the tracking device. 

Fox had company with him. The quintet of heavily armed men kept their firearms drawn and kept pace to the crumbling wall of the Pit. 

Lucius and the armed men strapped Kevlar vests and straps around their bodies as they rappelled to the bottom of the Pit. Fox quickly unfastened the metallic snaps and clasps as his eyes searched the dust through the dim. 

His dark eyes focused on the two still, quiet, and very dead corpses of Selina Kyle and Bruce Wayne. Fox ran to their fallen forms and dropped to the sandy floor as the odor of death reached his nose. His senses were assaulted as the scent of decay rose from the spongy form of the once living eccentric billionaire. 

Bruce’s belly had deflated from its recent bloated state and now was concave under his tattered and bloody designer shirt. 

Selina’s broken corpse was exposed to more light during the day and her decomposition had accelerated. Fox’s eyes crawled over her softened cadaverous face. 

As one of the men went and retrieved a pair of plastic body bags, back in Miami, Bane spoke urgently and held onto Erin as though she might disappear at any second. 

“What would you have of me?”

Erin pressed her lips together in a thin line and tried to form a coherent sentence with the growing distraction of his touch as he moved his hands down to cup under   
her bottom. She managed to not stammer as he moved his hands lower and traced under her thighs. 

As Erin took a deep breath and got her thoughts organized, back in the Pentagon, Gables was having a hard time interjecting anything in between the NSA Director’s fearsome litany. 

The Director’s voice held authority as he continued to speak. “You will find the body of a male and female that match the description of the Project Europa players. They will serve as the evidence you’ll relay of their deaths.”

The Director fell silent and Gables stared at the photos of his family and the promises from the man on the other end of the phone. 

“Well, General? Will you be deactivating this project?” 

“Yes, goddamnit, give me your word that my family will stay safe.”

The Director chuckled, “yes General. Your family is safe as long as the government forgets all about the project.”

As General Gables returned home that night after an hour of deactivating and classifying the files of Project Europa. In a rush of sentiment, he had called his wife and asked if her and the boys would like take-out from their favorite pizzeria. 

As Gables paid and picked up a large thin crust pepperoni pizza for him and his wife and two personal pan extra cheese pizzas for the kids, Lucius Fox arranged for the transportation of Selina and Bruce’s bodies from the Pit. 

Back in Miami, Erin was startled by the sound of Tabby’s voice calling from the other side of the bedroom suite door. 

“We’re heading out to watch the sunset,” Tabby called and the sound of the suite door closing soon followed. 

Bane stood from the tub and led Erin out of the bathroom before she could speak after Tabby and Owen’s departure. 

“Wait,” Erin said stopping in her tracks. Bane paused and looked back at where she stood, translucent bubbles popping on her wet, naked skin. “Please?” she asked when he pulled on her hand. 

“Yes doctor?” he asked and closed the distance between them. Erin closed her eyes as she felt his hardening cock press against her slick belly. 

“I want you more than anything,” she started and ran her hands along the thick scars of varying age that decorated his flesh as she added. “But I don’t want to live in constant fear that I’ll become a premature widow or that you’ll disappear in a hole in any number of deserts.”

Bane looked down at Erin’s face and traced his hands down the sides of her arms and let them come to rest on the gentle slope of her lower back. “I want us to start over, a new beginning….” she added before his lips descended upon hers and cut off her words. 

“I will go wherever you’d like doctor,” Bane whispered in between pressing frantic kisses to her lips. 

A wide and genuine smile of relief filled Erin’s face and she squealed as Bane hoisted her up in his arms and carried her to the large bed. 

A moan escaped Erin’s lips as Bane cupped his hand over her sex. Her pulse pounded in her throat as she rocked her pelvis slightly against his hand. Bane started to delicately massage her delicate folds which became slick and drenched his fingertips as her breath came faster. 

“Bane…?” she managed to say as she found herself arching her back against his body. 

He answered her by sliding a finger inside her wet opening. Erin gripped his broad shoulders and Bane gave a low appreciative growl as he felt her body start to squeeze around his digit. 

"Yes?" he whispered against her neck as he never stopped touching her. Bane had started making small circles over her clit and Erin felt herself start to lose control. 

Erin’s answer was ripped from her mouth as her orgasm washed over her. She tightened her thighs around his waist and whispered in a strangled moan, “please.”

All Bane heard was her genuine want and need. He pushed his cock slowly into her body, tentatively at first. Erin let herself be engulfed by the sensation of Bane's length as he pushed in and out of her.

He bent her knees and brought them up to his waist as he increased his rhythm. Soon Erin was lifting her pelvis to meet his. There was no sound except for their breathing as he let himself get lost in the feel of her body. He could feel her body tighten and twitch around his cock and he fought for control.

Bane felt himself nearing the edge and knew he would have to shift positions, or he was going to come.

He pulled out of Erin and she groaned in disappointment.

Bane smiled and laid a kiss below her bellybutton and slowly pushed her thighs farther apart. Erin inhaled sharply as he dropped his head in between her thighs and began to probe her with his tongue. Bane held her legs open until she began to tremble underneath his touch.

Bane flicked his tongue against her repeatedly until she started to moan softly. Before her climax overtook her, he rolled onto his back and pulled Erin on top of him. She straddled his body and with her own orgasm waiting in the wings, lowered herself onto him. Erin rose up and down on Bane’s rigid cock, his vascular system engorged and pulsating as he gripped her hips and helped push and pull her down onto his body.

Bane lightly teased her swollen clit as she rode him and felt her spasm and moan simultaneously as her orgasm took over her body. He felt his own resolve rapidly dissipate as his orgasm spilled from him. Bane gripped her body firmly and pushed his hips up against hers until the waves of ecstasy had finished washing over him. 

Bane carefully rolled to the side, still inside Erin. After his orgasm ebbed, he pulled out of her and wrapped his arms tightly around her, trapping her against his naked chest. 

Erin sighed sleepily as Bane moved back and kissed his way along the line of her neck. She shivered as Bane kissed a path over the bony prominence of her clavicle and pressed his lips on her sternum. Erin gasped as his mouth captured her nipple, which hardened under the movement of his lips. Bane kneaded the supple flesh of her breast as she felt his hot breath against her flesh. 

“Where shall we settle down doctor?” Bane’s question was muffled as his lips were pressed against the warm skin of her upper chest. 

“Can we stay here for a few days?” Erin asked as she yawned deeply. Bane smiled against her sweet-smelling skin and rolled to his side, pulling her into his strong embrace.

“Whatever you would like doctor,” Bane whispered as the sun set brilliantly on Florida’s horizon.


End file.
